Under the new
law that will go into effect in May of next year, people who die in the state
will have the option to have their bodies transformed into soil suitable for
use in gardening in a process called recomposition
Katrina Spade is the founder of Recompose, and lobbied for
the law
LOS ANGELES: Washington on Tuesday became the first US state
to legalize human composting after its eco-friendly governor signed a bill to that
effect in a bid to cut carbon emissions from burials and cremations.
Under the new law that will go into effect in May of next
year, people who die in the state will have the option to have their bodies
transformed into soil suitable for use in gardening in a process called
recomposition.
"Recomposition offers an alternative to embalming and
burial or cremation that is natural, safe, sustainable, and will result in
significant savings in carbon emissions and land usage," said Katrina
Spade, who lobbied for the law and is the founder of Recompose, a Seattle-based
company set to be the first to offer the service.
"The idea of returning to nature so directly and being
folded back into the cycle of life and death is actually pretty
beautiful," Ms Spade added in a statement sent to news agency AFP.
She said she became interested in the process about 10 years
ago after turning 30 and thinking more about her own mortality.
Spade then began examining the technical aspects of creating
an environmentally friendly "third option" that could compete with
the $20-billion US funeral industry, which offers conventional burial and
cremation.
Her approach - developed with Washington State University,
which did clinical trials with donor bodies - calls for a dead person to be
placed in an hexagonal steel container filled with wood chips, alfalfa and
straw.
The container is then shut and the body is decomposed by
microbes within 30 days. The end product is a dry, fluffy nutrient-rich soil
resembling what one would buy at a local nursery and suitable for vegetable
gardens.
"Everything - including bones and teeth - is
recomposed," Spade said. "That's because our system creates the
perfect environment for thermophilic (i.e. heat-loving) microbes and beneficial
bacteria to break everything down quite quickly."
The process used by Recompose is the same as that used for
decades with farm animals and the clinical trials carried out by the university
in Washington found that it was also safe for use with humans.
'Socially acceptable materials'
"We have found that the essential methods that we use
for livestock mortality composting are also effective for human
disposition," said Dr Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, a professor of soil science
at Washington State University. "We have substantially changed the
materials used, to be socially acceptable, but the basic principles that we
have learned from livestock mortality composting are very effective for the
human research subjects that we used."
According to statistics, more than one in two Americans opt
for cremation. In Washington state, nearly 75 percent of people choose that
option.
Spade expects her company to charge some $5,500 for a
"natural organic reduction," an amount a little bit over the price of
cremation but less than the price of burial in a casket.
Her innovation comes as so-called "green" or
earth-friendly burials are gaining traction in the United States, where
companies are now offering organic caskets or a burial in which the body is
wrapped in a simple shroud in towns that allow it.
The actor Luke Perry, star of the hit-series "Beverly
Hills 90210" who died in March, was buried in a biodegradable suit made
partly out of mushrooms, as he requested.
The so-called "mushroom suit" was developed by
Coeio, a California startup, that said the attire helps the body decompose,
neutralizes toxins found in the body and transfers nutrients to plant life.
But not everyone is enthusiastic about turning bodies into
garden-variety soil, notably the Catholic church, which has denounced
recomposition as undignified.
"The Catholic Church believes that disposing human
remains in such a manner fails to show enough respect for the body of the
deceased," Joseph Sprague, executive director of the Washington State
Catholic Conference, said in a letter to the legislative committee that
examined the bill signed on Tuesday.
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