Washington State Legalizes Composting Of Human Bodies

Shelby Talcott | Contributor

Washington became the first state to allow composting of human bodies as an alternative to being buried or cremated when Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed the legislation Tuesday.

Now, licensed facilities are allowed to offer “natural organic reduction.” This process takes several weeks, and involves mixing a body with wood chips, straw and other substances. The body eventually turns into about two wheelbarrows full of compost, according to NBC News.

Just like cremation, family members can keep the compost and use it as they please.

Composting human bodies supposedly allows for an alternative that is healthier for the environment. Cremation requires a lot of natural energy, which result in carbon emissions, and burials can pollute groundwater because of the chemicals put into bodies. Traditional burials also take up land, according to Democratic Washington state Sen. Jamie Pedersen, who sponsored the measure.

“There’s very little question that we have to make significant changes in a lot of what we do to deal with the environmental consequences of our actions,” Pedersen told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Both of the existing methods permitted under Washington law have significant environmental consequences.”

Pedersen told TheDCNF that he was inspired by his neighbor Katrina Spade. Spade was an architecture graduate at the University of Mass.

Spade took the already-practiced form of using deceased livestock as compost and altered it for humans. Using alfalfa, wood chips, and straw, she figured out that this combination resulted in a mixture that works to speed up decomposition. This decomposition happens when a body is then placed in a particular structure that controls temperature, moisture, and rotates the body, according to NBC News.

In 2017, Spade founded Recompose, which offers an “alternative choice to cremation and conventional burial methods.” She then ran a pilot program in 2018 on six bodies that Spade said wanted to be a part of the study, according to USA Today.

After the study finished, Pedersen told TheDCNF that Spade came to him about supporting the measure, and that he agreed.

“Nobody has to do one or the other…but for folks who are concerned about having their final act on the planet be one that has a negative effect on the environment, it’s a really good alternative,” said Pedersen to TheDCNF.

“I’ve had at least dozens of messages, if not hundreds, of people anxiously awaiting the legislation to go into effect,” Pedersen continued when asked about the public’s reaction to this idea. (RELATED: People In Washington State ‘Excited’ About Becoming Human Compost – Possibly A Tree – After Death)

On March 1, Gov. Inslee, who signed the bill, announced his run for presidency. He has said that he hopes to “attack climate change,” and his campaign largely revolves around climate change issues.

“We’re at a place in history where I think it’s really time for us to apply new technology and innovation to this very basic fact of life,” Pedersen said to TheDCNF.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/22/washi...d8VVe4MA8f2ikqU

I’m all for it. I find burial rituals weird. Huge waste of space, resources, and money. The funeral industry, much like the wedding industry, is bloated and self serving. Spending thousands of dollars on mahogany boxes with silk linings... that then get lowered into the ground with a corpse in it. Then that gets marked with a date and name carved in stone. For what? A box for a body to rot in. A marker that someone will visit for a generation or two then likely not get visited again. Weird.

I’d prefer to be taken to the woods and let the animals deal with me. Compost me. At least burn me to ashes. Who really cares. I’m dead. Just don’t have me taking up a plot of land in some field that needs to be mowed and tended with a bunch of other corpses lying all around me. Again. Weird.

Screw being buried. I want to be in a mausoleum.

Not me.

Everyone already knows what to do with me. Where to spread my ashes.
Although now, I may have some new alternative to consider.

No way folks are going to spend good money on a box and a hole for me.

I want a viking funeral, but my wife refuses to be tied to the mast. I mean really. If I'm dead, her life is over anyway, right?

Yeah her life living in hell with Eric is finally over.

I've given this some thought, also. I have this vision that If I know my time is coming, I'm going to have a funeral party and celebrate with family and friends. Then I want my family to drop me off in Yellowstone, I'll wave goodbye as I strap on my pack and walk down the trail into the wilderness. I'd much rather have people's last vision of me doing something like that, not as a formaldehyde stuffed, made-up whatever lying in a casket.

And yet you’d be ok with them seeing on the news of their old man remains being discovered mauled by a grizzly bear, mountain lion or something else in a national park?

I kind of get that but I think that could be brutal for the family.. wondering if/when you died, whether it was peaceful or mauled by a bear, etc...

Not to mention, for the next 30 years there would be sightings of you at gas stations and such.. too much for the family.

I can think of a few people who could make up for past transgressions by helping my tomatoes grow.

This is a cool idea.

I might pick this option over my current one: when I die, I want my ashes brown off the bridge over the highway, forcing somebody to use their windshield wipers in annoyance for my final troll attempt.

j\c HUMAN COMPOST...Man the liberals in this country are the sickest of sick human beings ...No wonder were the laughing stock of the world

OK... no fights, insults or animus here, I promise.
I just have to ask:

What about this is sick, in your opinion?
How is so very different than "ashes to ashes, dust to dust?"

As I see it, it is a completely viable way to complete the cycle of life, in that it actually helps to promote life. As the article suggested, it seems superior to filling a dead body with toxic chemicals, laying that body in an ornate box that sets the family back multiple thousands of dollars... to then be dropped in a hole to be covered forever. Why is this custom not considered sick? Just because it's thousands of years old, and was based on the only viable way to dispose of a body that didn't sicken everyone nearby?

*It costs a fortune because bereaved folks will pay it, not realizing they have other options.
*It's wasteful in the extreme. Fine furniture and other objects could be fashioned from that same piece of Mahogany.
*It eats up real estate, in a world that's already plagued by overpopulation.

You see... I don't consider this a 'liberal' thing at all. I consider it a new, practical and potentially beneficial alternative to what we've always done.

Truth be told, I'd much rather nurture a new sapling into an adult tree than poison the water table if my box ever springs a leak.

I'd be interested in reading your thoughts as to why you consider it 'sick.' Maybe you'll have some good points. Maybe others may encourage you to see it differently.


.02

I've been thinking about donating my body to science. I looked into it a little. There are a few companies out there that will take your body illnesses and all (except certain contagious diseases), they take tissue for research as needed at the time, then they cremate the remainder and send it to your loved ones or spread them at sea with others.

I'm already an organ donor with my driver license registration, so doing this kind of completes the act of giving as much as you can to help others as a final act.

I've know for years that I don' want a burial. Cremation, one of those tree pod forest, or donating to science have been the options I've grappled with. If I'm cremated I don't want to sit on the shelf somewhere or burden my kids with my ashes. Don't see the sense in a grave or mausoleum for ashes either.

https://www.boredpanda.com/bios-urn-will...ampaign=organic

I'll be going in a bio urn when I die.

He probably gardens with compost. Not sure I want your fermenting decomposing carcass growing my salad bro. So I can see the nasty/sick side. But used for forestry, reclaiming landfills, reclaiming strip mines... all good decent uses.

These are better nutrients for trees:

That's a big seed. No way are they sticking my rigor mortis body en utero. Cool idea though.

Like I said...

Yep. I've been composting local Steelers fans for years and have never had a single complaint. It works so well that even my local police department is curious!

What do they do about the smell?

Spend eternity in a compost pile?

Sounds like just another Saturday night where I come from.

No really, my body goes to UConn medical school for dissection.

I got this ID card (and every one knows this).

When I die, they pick up my body. Put it in cold storage.

And the UConn medical students will get to marvel at one of the wonders of mother nature.

After they are done, my remains will be cremated and I've requested that they be put on a rocket ship and shot to the outer universe.

Or thrown in a dumpster.

Either one.

I like the suspense of not knowing.

I want to be frozen and placed next to Ted Williams Head.

There is some sort of new health/energy drink called Soylent.

Been around for years.

Why am I not surprised you support government regulations that tell you what you can and can't do with your own body.

Cool idea . Read somewhere about a practice where they cut your body up and feed it to vultures then break all the bones u til every part of you is consumed . Always appealed to me .

😂😂 Riley having a good point ? I seriously laughed at that .

If you got composted, people would be complaining these tomatoes taste like beer.

Hey- I took a shot.

I asked; he answered.
Then I thanked him for answering me.
It was all very civilized between us.



I know, right?



p.s. several posts in this thread were removed since earlier this afternoon. I was at work, so I didn't discover the gaps until this evening. My thanks was in that run of deleted posts.

I don't know, I think they'd be at peace knowing that I went doing what I love in my favorite place on earth.

I don't have a problem with some of the government regulations where I am. Seeing as the entire area is about 10 feet above see level, and our water table is higher than elsewhere, the regulations keep embalming chemicals out of the water. Other than religious purposes, I think burial is a waste of perfectly good land.

Wait I missed where you posted that you wanted to go while at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch

Of course you would. That’s the white mans world. Thinking someone can actually own property and land. Native American’s called their burial sites sacred lands. You know, much of the same lands that are now covered with concrete.

I’m not a fan of cemeteries either, but they are there. They are sacred lands now. To bad “sacred” isn’t a thing anymore, so it won’t stop some rich white businessmen from destroying our sacred lands again. The game has changed. After all.. it is the trump era.

Omg plz stop

That's a huge leap of near logic, even for someone like you. And you brought race into it too?
"The sun's hot."
"That's because it's a white man's world."

I hate to tell you this, but I bought my little chunk of land from the previous owner, and the paperwork says it's mine. At least until I die and the government tries to force my kids to pay half it's value in taxes.

Yes, NAIs called it sacred ground. Christians called their burial sites hallowed. Your point is? I've personally never defiled a grave. I don't even walk over them. I used to go cut grass and clean them up too. My wife would do rubbings on old headstones in Scotland to preserve what was written on them. We don't dig up graves because we're white.

"Our sacred lands"? Just what tribe do you belong to?

The city of Savannah is built over graves for reasons including that Sherman took all the gravestones with him to forge streams and creeks with his wagons.

People lost track of where the graves were.

Savannah is known as a necropolis.