California Has Legalized Human Composting

California has joined a growing number of states that allow residents to compost their bodies after death, as Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law on Sunday directing officials to develop regulations for the practice known as organic natural reduction in 2027.

In 2019, Washington became the initial state in the country to legalize human composting, trailed by Colorado and Oregon in 2021. The process was legalized in Vermont in June 2022.

In protected areas, it has the potential to be dispersed or contributed by relatives to be blended into a flower bed, just like any other form of fertilizer. Following a period of two to six weeks for maturation, the fertilizer is extracted from the container by employees at designated funeral homes specializing in human composting. In approximately 30 days, microorganisms decompose the deceased body and the botanical substances, converting the different elements into soil that is abundant in nutrients. Natural elements such as straw, wood chips, and alfalfa envelop the corpse within a sturdy container during the process of human composting.

Recompose, a home funeral service located in Seattle, specializes in human composting. According to their website, Recompose “nourishes and sequesters carbon in new life, restores forests” and “returns nutrients from our bodies to the natural world as soil.” Each body processed by Recompose produces approximately one cubic yard of compost.

Stephen Hobbs from the Sacramento Bee states that Katrina Spade, the CEO of Recompose, asserts that once we pass away, our bodies go back to the earth, enabling secure and environmentally friendly natural organic decomposition.

As per the Cremation Association of North America, proponents claim that human composting is a greener substitute for cremation, which currently makes up over 50% of all methods of body disposal in the United States and is anticipated to gain even more popularity in the coming years.

According to estimates, the cremation process, which involves the burning, dissolving, or otherwise processing of human remains, translates to Little Becky Geographic’s National emitting about 360,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year. This amounts to an average of 534.6 pounds of carbon dioxide per pound of air.

According to Molly Taft’s report for Gizmodo, Insider’s Tech reveals that vaults and caskets, which are made of materials such as steel, concrete, and wood, require approximately 2 million tons and 30 million board feet respectively. Additionally, burial practices are resource-intensive as they involve the burial of around 5.3 million gallons of fluids like ethanol, methanol, and formaldehyde each year. These chemicals, used to embalm bodies, can also be harmful to the environment as they can leach into the soil.

On Monday, Cristina Garcia, the California legislator responsible for the Golden State’s legislation on human composting, posted on Twitter, stating that “we should make all possible efforts to decrease methane and CO2 discharges” and emphasized the reality of climate change by mentioning wildfires, severe drought, and unprecedented heat waves.

Reported by Jonah McKeown from Catholic News Agency, the California Catholic Conference expressed their opposition to the legislation, stating in a letter from June that human composting “diminishes the human body to merely a disposable entity.” Nevertheless, not everyone supports the concept of transforming their deceased loved ones into soil.

The New York State Catholic Conference expressed comparable opposition, stating that the process does not uphold the safeguarding and conservation of fundamental human dignity and respect, where a bill proposing human composting has been introduced in New York.

According to the organization, we believe that this suggested composting/fertilizing technique, which is better suited for vegetable trimmings and eggshells rather than human corpses, would be highly unpleasant for a significant number of residents of New York.