'Give back to the earth': Washington could legalize composting of human remains
When Briar Bates was dying she made a request to her friend, Katrina Morgan: bury me in my garden.
As a 42-year-old artist and landscape designer, Bates had spent years tending to her garden on Vashon Island, Washington, and didn’t want to leave it behind when she died, according to Morgan.
Morgan knew it wasn’t feasible, because state law requires first designating the property a cemetery. So she contacted Katrina Spade, a local designer and entrepreneur developing a new after-death option: human composting.
Bates signed on to be a part of the groundbreaking four-month study at Washington State University, which would involve researchers testing the effectiveness of composting on human bodies. She died in 2017, after being diagnosed with metastatic melanoma, a particularly dangerous form of skin cancer.
“[Briar] placed nature and ecology above anything else,” said Morgan. “That was her religion. That was her spiritual center and it was her physical home and it was the place that she was the most comfortable.”
With the help of people like Bates, and a driven team of researchers, designers and lawmakers, Washington is now on the verge of becoming the first US state to legalize human composting, also known as “recomposition”.
A bill introduced by Democratic senator Jamie Pederson made it through the Senate, and last month a House consumer protection committee unanimously approved it, with a few minor changes.
The legislation, if signed by Washington’s Democratic governor Jay Inslee, would allow facilities in the state to legally compost bodies in a licensed facility by breaking them down into nutrient-rich soil.
Peterson believes human composting would be an excellent fit for Washington residents, given that the state is both environmentally conscious and not as religious as others in the US (nearly half of all adults in the state consider themselves not religious, according to a recent Gallup poll).
But the push to get the legislature to consider legalizing the practice has come largely from Spade, the CEO and founder of Recompose, a human-composting company. She got the idea while in graduate school, when a friend told her about the decades-old practice of farmers composting their livestock. She said she suddenly realized that that could be an environmentally-friendly option for human remains as well.
“It was a really wonderful epiphany to have that we haven’t discovered all the ways to care for our bodies, for our physical selves after death, and that this might be one really, not only useful and practical option, but also one that resonates for a lot of people emotionally,” said Spade.
“Cremation really just stops that cycle of life to death and life to death again by destroying the potential we have in our bodies to give back to the earth.”
In 2014, she teamed up with Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, a professor of sustainable and organic agriculture at Washington State University, and together they kicked off a pair of studies to determine the feasibility of composting humans.
Carpenter-Boggs explained that, like any animal body, humans contain a lot of protein and moisture. In order to help them quickly break down, they are placed in a vessel with oxygen and plant materials, such as wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. This combination also spurs microbial activity, which gets rid of any type of bacterium or virus on the body. The process typically takes about 30 days.
“It’s essentially speeding up the process that happens on the forest floor as dead organic material decomposes to create topsoil,” said Spade.
Human composting would also be a much greener after-death option, as it uses one-eighth the energy of cremation, and for every person who picks it over cremation or burial, it will save over a metric ton of CO2, according to Spade.
Last year, Spade met with Pederson, to see if he might be interested in introducing a bill that would legalize human composting. His answer was an enthusiastic yes.
“For that whole process to be more gentle, to allow people to essentially become part of the soil quickly that will turn into a tree or something, I just think there’s a lovely poetry about that,” he said.
The process faces some opposition from the Catholic church, which says it would be an undignified process, according to Pederson.
Lisa Devereau, president of the Washington State Funeral Directors Association, has also called for firm laws on where people can scatter the compost.
If the bill is approved in the legislature and signed off by Inslee, a process which could take months, there is still more work to do before human composting can be offered as a service. There will need to be discussions with the funeral board and other officials about the specific rules, explained Carpenter-Boggs.
Spade said once that happens, Recompose will work to get a permit so her company can open what she hopes will be the first human composting facility. The company currently has 7,000 people on its mailing list.
Spade said she plans to call the facility Recompose|SEATTLE, and wants it to be a place where family and friends can fully participate in the after-death process. Those closest to the person who has died will be able to wash and shroud the body, and then cover it with straw, alfalfa, and wood chips.
“We want this to be a place that feels welcoming and comfortable for families to come through,” she said. “We want it to be a place where we