Living with Composting: How Humans Can Help in End-of-Life Transitions in the U.S. And What They Can Do About It

I recently hosted a backyard barbecue at my apartment in Brooklyn. I put out three containers for waste: A trash can, a recycling bin and a compost bin. I discovered that our ideas of what was compostable were very different as I cleaned up at the end of the night. Do you mean vegetable scraps? It is definitely compostable. But what about meat? Is it possible that there are used paper plates? The paper towels were in question.

As my colleague Somini Sengupta reported this week, states across the country are passing laws to divert food waste from landfills. As these measures become more common, more cities are starting compost programs like the one I recently joined in New York.

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Greener newsletter. Our limited newsletter series guides you on lifestyle changes to minimize your personal role in the climate crisis — and reduce your eco-anxiety.

The funeral industry is being dismantled by human composters as part of the solution. The potential to change an age old practice has brought together former Silicon Valley types, celebrity investors, and mission-driven entrepreneurs as interested in lofty green goals as they are in changing our relationship to death.

Providers say they are seeing unprecedented demand. The human composting startup Return Home has seen 20 people from California, where human composting is not yet legal, transport loved ones to the company facilities in Washington state—including five who drove with bodies in tow.

Human composting could help lower the financial footprint of end-of-life arrangements. The median cost of a funeral with cremation in the US in 2021 was $6,971, and the median cost of a funeral with a viewing and burial was $7,848, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. It is possible to double the cost of a traditional burial if you don’t include a plot, headstone or other cemetery costs.

At Recompose, human composting happens in a steel cylinder that’s 8 feet long and 4 feet tall, Spade said. A body is placed in the vessel on a bed of wood chips and straw.

End-of-life options are important for preserving the natural-organic reduction standard k-standard, but not for the earth as described by Bixby

As interest in more sustainable end-of-life options grows, transparency about the practice is crucial, Bixby said. A recent National Funeral Directors Association survey found that 60.5% of respondents were interested in exploring “green” funeral options because of potential environmental benefits or other reasons.

With our families, we never want them to believe something that is not true. “If you’re going to do something, if it’s environmentally conscious, we think that’s wonderful. We want to be sure that people understand what they are buying.

“Human composting creates an environment in which beneficial microbes thrive, with a specific moisture content and ratio of carbon and nitrogen materials,” Spade said.

Everything inside will begin to degrade over the next 30 days. One body creates a cubic yard of soil amendment — a substance added to soil to improve its texture or health — which is removed from the vessel and cured for two to six weeks. Afterward, it can be donated to conservation projects, or a certain amount can be returned to loved ones. Even though the soil would be considered a human remains with regulations and restrictions on what people can do with them, the amount that a loved ones receive can depend on what a state allows.

“We hear from our clients that knowing that their body — or that of their loved one — will be able to return to the earth is deeply comforting,” Spade said.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/world/human-composting-natural-organic-reduction-scn-lbg/index.html

How Fast Can You Get Your Grounds? The Future of Direct Burial and Human Composting in the Los Angeles and Los Angeles Funeral Services

Most funeral homes, however, might not be quick to adopt the practice, Bixby said. He said direct cremation can be done the same day if a permit is issued. A burial typically takes three to five days, while human composting can take up to 120.

“As far as this growing, I see that it’s a problem that you can’t do high volume.” “As long as this process is, having five or six (vessels) doesn’t do a lot of good. … As a businessman, my feeling is this really won’t gain much ground for that main reason.”

It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It should not be about money, but when you are providing a service you have to keep the lights on.

Experts say the demand has grown due to Covid-19. The Pandemic brought death to the forefront of the public mind and exposed concerns about the environment, as places like Los Angeles had to suspend air pollution rules in order to process bodies.

“The fact that we are now seeing so many Californians flocking to Return Home in order to prepurchase services for themselves and their loved ones is proof-positive that [our technology] is the future of funeral services,” said Micah Truman, the company’s CEO and founder.

Founders paint a picture of an industry that is both collegial and competitive, where entrepreneurs connect at meetups and through group chats but often find themselves looking over their shoulders for people entering the industry with less altruistic views. This is especially true as old guards of the funeral industry seek to cash in on the new trend, Truman said.

The Washington, D.C., Affordable Natural Organic Reduction (Recompose) Project: Real-Time Monitoring of the Expensive Costs of Cremation and Natural Reduction

In the ensuing years, Spade worked with lobbyists, lawmakers, and investors to legalize natural organic reduction in Washington in 2019. By December 2020, her company, Recompose, had made the service available to consumers for $7,000—in line with the median cost of cremation, at $6,971, and the median cost of a funeral with burial, at $7,848. The cemetery plot costs can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.