Human composting is now legal in Washington state.
The US state has become the first to allow bodies to be turned into compost as an alternative to being buried or cremated.
Governor Jay Inslee signed into law a bill which made it legal for companies to offer “natural organic reduction” meaning a body will turn into soil in a matter of weeks.
Katrina Spade, founder, and CEO of the company Recompose said on their website: “our service – recomposition – gently converts human remains into soil so that we can nourish new life after we die. Our modular system uses nature’s principles to return our bodies to the earth, sequestering carbon and improving soil health. In fact, we’ve calculated carbon savings over a metric tonne per person.”
‘It gives meaning and use to what happens to our bodies after death,’ said Nora Menkin, executive director of the Seattle-based People’s Memorial Association, which helps people plan for funerals.
The Daily Mail reports “Loved ones are allowed to keep the soil to spread, just as they might spread the ashes of someone who has been cremated – or even use it to plant vegetables or a tree.” Those in support of the new form of decomposing of the dead say it is the most eco-friendly process yet.
As reported, “Supporters say the method is an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation, which releases carbon dioxide and particulates into the air, and conventional burial, in which people are drained of their blood, pumped full of formaldehyde and other chemicals that can pollute groundwater, and placed in a nearly indestructible coffin, taking up land.”
State law previously dictated that remains be disposed of by burial or cremation.
The law, which takes effect in May 2020, added composting as well as alkaline hydrolysis, a process already legal in 19 other states.
