Turning Loved Ones Into Soil: What is Human Composting?
Visiting Terramation Facilities with Dad
“It felt like an out of body experience. Not me, but me… in abstract, but reality. It was not as emotional as it may be if you were visiting when you were sick or dying.” -My Dad, age 81 and living life to the fullest each day.
It’s remarkable when you realize you are living through a time that will be remembered as a revolutionary moment for an age-old industry. We don’t often realize these changes as they are happening and fewer of us catch this wave just as it is gaining momentum.
I am speaking about natural organic reduction/terramation/human composting. In this article, I share with you what I learned and some of the feelings that came up while touring two human composting facilities in Washington state with my Dad.
Every movement has a founder and Katrina Spade is that pioneer for ecological death care as the person to first conceive the idea of human composting. After years of research and design, she worked to get a legislative bill passed in Washington state that succeeded in May of 2019. She is the CEO and founder of Recompose, the first fully licensed funeral home for human composting. Human composting is currently legal in twelve states. That number is changing all the time and you can track it here.
Prep Your Departure and Plan Your Body’s Future!
Before I continue on with the story, I would be remiss if I did not put in this plea for planning. As an end of life doula we often say that death is about the living. Our loved one is off to the next journey and we are left to figure out how to live without them. It’s heart wrenching and oftentimes isolating. One of the benefits to advanced funeral planning is not having as many details to deal with as you are in shock and grieving your beloved.
One task of the living that makes our death easier for those we love, is to make some pretty big choices for after we die, ahead of time. One of those choices is about “post-mortem disposition” or what to do with our bodies after we die.
It is much easier to deal with these important decisions when we are not also navigating the many challenges that come with the health care system or the sudden death of a loved one.
And for those in grief after we die, it is easier to grieve and mourn if they are not starting from scratch on your disposition and funeral plans. Not to mention pre-planning can help avoid conflicts as to what your intentions are–because we all know that exhaustion + grief can make for a mix that leads to miscommunication.
Believe me, there will still be lots to do, but the major planning related to your disposition and by extension your funeral, memorial, etc. is a gift to your loved ones if it has been sketched out, written down, and sometimes even paid for in advance.
Legacy in Soil: Describing Human Composting
The process of human composting was derived in part from working with “mortality composters” for farm animals when they have a mass die off and are in turn composted. The composting process used by these practitioners is not done in a way that would work for how we value human animal bodies over other animal bodies. A new process using age-old thinking had to be engineered.
Human composting involves taking a human body that has not been embalmed and placing it in a vessel that has a mixture of alfalfa, hay, and wood chips/sawdust or some combination of organic material. Oxygen is then pumped into the vessel/container and that’s all that is needed for your body's microbiome to start working to decompose you.
Fascinatingly, within six hours of you being in the vessel your temperature rises to 150 degrees just from the energy those microbes are creating. “Under Washington state regulations, this natural heat has to be sustained for three straight days to kill off any pathogens that otherwise might contaminate the soil.”1
Detoxification of the soil is one reason why I like the recomposition option vs green burial where a body is shrouded and put directly into the earth. Unfortunately, our bodies are toxic, due to microplastics, ingested antibiotics and other medicines over time, and the food we eat. Not to mention the filtration needed for working through medical treatments like chemotherapy.
This makes human composting an environmental winner for those who are concerned with earth care as it relates to disposition of the body.
The vessel temperature is monitored via computers and turned approximately every week for a period of time until there are only bones and any metal that was in your body left. Next, the material from the vessel is dumped out of the container. The metal is removed and the bones are crushed into smaller pieces. This is done with aquamation and cremation as well–our bones are made of some seriously strong stuff!
Finally, you are put into another vessel with the organic mixture again and now the microbiome can continue transforming the bone marrow etc. turning you into healthy soil. The decomposition process is complete in 90 days or less.
At this point your family member is now ready to “return home.” You are able to come pick up your loved one in small containers or bags of soil. The whole amount is about the size of a pickup truck bed. You can bury the soil, plant trees, gardens, or whatever you like. Your beloved is now transformed into nutrient rich soil. If you don’t want all the soil, or just want a small amount, the remaining soil will be donated to a conservation area of your choosing or the funeral home can decide for you.
Naming Nature’s Cycle
Ok so let’s talk about all the different names being used for this process. You might have noticed I have mentioned a few. As a Communication professor one of our first talks, in almost every class regardless of topic, is about the power of language and naming. This theory has a fancy name called Symbolic Interaction. Coming out of sociology, this concept focuses on the idea that language literally shapes the world around us.
Our language is made of symbols (the alphabet–each letter is a symbol) used to create words, and those words are abstract, arbitrary, and ambiguous. People give these words meaning. We create meaning in society and we can change these meanings. Think about how words have shifted meaning over time. For example, you rarely hear people today use the word gay to mean happy. (Though one might advocate bringing this back LOL :-) In this way, language is socially constructed (created) by people.
So, one can imagine it would be important to choose our words carefully in shaping how human composting is perceived. Right now, because society is at the inception stage of bringing this new burial method into the mainstream, several words are being used and some have more or less of a “charge” to them depending on your audience. This is the list of current names used to talk about composting humans:
Human Composting
Terramation–Terra latin for earth or land and ‘mation’ meaning process or action so becoming earth
Soil transformation
Natural Organic Reduction (NOR)
Recomposting
Recomposition
Each of these terms has a different feeling or meaning depending on who you are speaking with and their views on death and dying. When we speak about human composting our brain naturally fills in the human as what is being composted. This can be challenging for some people.
Terms like natural organic reduction take what is being composted (the human) out of the term and thus it could be easier for someone to embrace.2 However, with terms like natural organic reduction you need the rest of the context to make it clear you are talking about humans. The same can be said for soil transformation and so on. Language matters, and especially so during the first stages of a new technology or process like recomposition.
Into Earth: Touring a Touring Terramation Facility
I boarded the plane to Seattle from Arizona and met up with my Dad flying in from California. After dealing with some pretty cray construction (we heard it is perpetual at that airport LOL) we checked into our hotel, had a nice dinner catch up, and got ready for our site visits. We were not sure what to expect and so we were able to visit with an open mind. I’ll admit, I did have some hopes of finding something that felt good environmentally and spiritually for my body's disposition one day.
I totally relate to my Dad’s insight in his quote at the beginning of this post.
It was surreal to be talking about ourselves in the past tense and still there was an unexpected lightness to it even as we leaned into embracing our mortality. In some ways it felt like I was picking my wedding venue but it was for my body’s disposition.
I mean, to be fair, they are both billion dollar industries. Most life passages are e.g. childbirth.
Similar to being on a tour of a cemetery to decide if you wanted to be buried there, we learned about the process among those who were peacefully decomposing in vessels treated with love, intention, and beautiful reverence for the dead. I had to keep reminding myself of this because my brain did not yet associate these vessels/containers as places of temporary rest for the dead.
In all seriousness, I did not expect the touring of these facilities to take some of the fear out of body disposal and death in general. But for me, they did. The feeling was casual and even spa-like and without the feel of a traditional funeral home. All this despite having to be located in industrial zoned areas per city codes. I thought to myself, “OK, this is now a viable option. What vibe or preferences do I want when I die–I get to choose.”
In fact, this new death care model seems to be set up to allow families to slow down. To really pause in the stillness of the moment when death arrives allowing grief to flow. Recompose even has a room set up where you can sit with your loved one and wash the body, use oils, sing songs, drum, whatever. (See the pic below and note this is not a real body in the pic!)
So there I was standing with my Dad imagining him peacefully in one of these Recompose Star Trek/Futuristic looking vessels and Katrina mentions that we can even request our favorite music to be played when they turn the compost weekly. I look at my Dad, tears welling up, and say “They can play your favorite Christmas Songs” and we all smile and he chuckles a bit (My Dad is a HUGE Christmas person). The first song that popped into my mind was Florence and the Machine’s “Shake it Out” LOL.
The idea of laying to rest with flowers and other organic material “just made sense.”
The Death Care Revolution Meets The Multicultural Belief Maze
To be fair, new ideas in general, and especially those related to body disposition after death are hard to navigate for humans/families. It has never been easy to get these conversations flowing in advance. Not many people like to be talking about death and dying–hence the end of life doula movement and the cultural need to bring life to conversations about death (but that’s another article).
A friend once shared with me this wisdom; What happens when you die is still a part of your life.
Simple but profound. A main reason people fear death is linked to the illusion that we have control in life. So the realization that we can’t control our death increases this fear. By going through what a person’s choices are for after death care, they can feel more control and in turn lessen their anxiety about death and the fear of the unknown.
Control what you can now and brace for the mystery of the rest.
And yet, even with the apprehension about planning for our bodies' disposition, Gen X is signing up early for human composting. Jake at Return Home told us the average age for pre-arranging at their facility was early fifties which is incredibly young (they have even done a pre-arrangement for an 18 year old!). Perhaps this is a sign that recomposition is opening the door for younger people to be talking about body disposition earlier in life, which this end of life doula is thrilled about.
Pre-planning at the age of 50 is compared to the average age of someone pre-planning which would normally be 76-82 years old in the traditional field. I asked if it was just environmental folks seeking terramation as an option and they said they were surprised but it has been all sorts of people–farmers, ranchers, and people of many different backgrounds, cultures and religions.
People feel “it just makes sense” to be composted. Who they voted for doesn’t matter.
And yet, for some, this death care practice brings up religious concerns and issues of choice and respect related to what one can do with their body after death. Seen from many different angles and ideological viewpoints, these thoughts can find individuals entering into foreign territory ripe with a multitude of cultural belief systems at play. Not to mention the complex relationships we have about how we view the afterlife and in turn if we agree with our loved ones on these matters.
All the more reason to have these discussions early and to give the people involved time to explore what comes up for them related to human composting and why. I can’t think of a better way to begin discussing your after death care. Most importantly, try to approach these discussions from a space of love. If you are in the mix already dealing with illness and more, take that into account as well.
Remember, we live in a grief deficient culture that tries to avoid and prolong death so talking about it can bring up grief, fear, and all sorts of things you may not have expected. It's OK.
All of these early preparations are part of helping us feel more comfortable when the final act of living happens–dying. On the other hand, you may end up having some treasured memories with your Dad like I did.
If you want to chat about your after-death care, plan your funeral ahead of time so your loved ones don’t have to, generate some wish planning, or create a legacy project, I would love to have a free discovery call with you to see if I might be able to support you. You might be surprised how talking about dying enriches your living!
More information can be found at:
Recompose and Return Home
Listen to this quick three minute story on NPR about human composting here: "The Ultimate Green Burial"
In academic worlds this language phenomenon is called the “absent referent” coined by Carol Adams in a book called The Sexual Politics of Meet. To learn more click here Absent Referent as a Concept
Well written.
My husband and I have been searching for years for a better solution for our final wishes. This is it, thank you so much for doing this research and sharing it with everyone, it is exactly what we’ve been looking for!