NY bid to legalize human composting
The compost-mortem may soon be coming to a funeral home near you.
Assemblywoman Amy Paulin (D-Westchester) and state Sen. Leroy Comrie (D-Queens) have co-sponsored a bill to legalize human composting as part of measures aiming to eliminate carbon emissions in the state by 2050.
The bill can now be taken up by the full Senate after it was voted out of committee Tuesday.
Should it become law, Return Home, a Washington-state funeral service that offers “human
composting as a death-care option,” says it is poised to fulfill the last wishes of New Yorkers.
“I’m passionately in favor of it,” said Ned Baldwin, 51, who owns Houseman Restaurant in Soho.
Baldwin said he plunked down $4,950 with Return Home to be composted — at a much later date.
Dust to dust
The 60-day, chemical-free process involves putting a person’s remains in a vessel with organic material such as straw, alfalfa or sawdust. The box is sealed and attached to an HVAC system, and the remains are allowed to decompose.
At the 30-day mark, the contents are screened for inorganic material, and remaining bone is broken up and put back in. After another 30 days, the contents are returned to the deceased’s family.
In addition to Washington, Colorado and Oregon have also legalized the process, known as “natural organic reduction.”
And now with New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and California looking to follow suit, human composting could “take off as the world’s first truly Earth-positive death-care method, as burial and cremation options are environmentally unsustainable,” Return Home CEO Micah Truman told The Post.
To date, Return Home has serviced 50 families. Once a person’s remains are composted, the company will deliver up to 400 pounds of soil — a mixture of organics and human remains in a 3-to-1 ratio — to the deceased’s family.
Half of the families have taken all of the soil, while the rest have accepted just a portion, Truman said.
He said that a Washington family used the soil to plant trees at their home and that a Hawaiian family plans to scatter the soil of their 23year-old daughter in their homeland.
‘Deeply personal’
Sen. Comrie said he aimed to put forward “the most thoughtful bill we can in this sensitive area.”
“End-of-life planning involves deeply personal decisions,” he said in an e-mail to The Post.
The New York State Catholic Conference is dead-set against the bill.
“Composting and fertilizing may be appropriate for vegetable clippings or eggshells, but not for our mortal remains,” said Dennis Poust, executive director of group, which represents the Catholic bishops.
Funeral directors, meanwhile, are not so eager to discuss the topic.
“Whatever the law allows, we would do,” said one longtime Staten Island funeral director. “Personally, I think it’s horrific. Would I take my mother and do that to her? Never in a million years. I don’t think that’s the respectful thing to do. But if it’s legal, we have to do it.”