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Last year, life star Martha Stewart made an internet sensation when she told a podcast host that she would choose to compost if she were buried or cremated after her death. You have Seattle entrepreneur Katrina Spade to thank for making that option an accessible, legitimate choice.
While a graduate student studying architecture, Spade set out to create an alternative way to relax people – one that offered a climate-friendly, sustainable solution while still being functional in urban environments and appealing to loved ones.
“Cremation and burial, both pollute in their own way,” Spade said. “And I don’t want my last act to pollute the world.”
So in 2020, Spade launched his company, Recompose, the first in the US to develop the technology needed for commercial composting. Now 14 states have approved the practice and more than ten others are considering it. More companies have joined Recompose in offering another “death care” service and all are looking to scale.
Compared to cremation options, cremation produces about 530 pounds of carbon dioxide, about the same as driving a fuel-efficient car from Seattle to San Diego. Funerals are land consuming and can rely on toxic embalming chemicals, chemically treated caskets, and concrete ceilings. Composting requires almost no energy input and produces clean soil.
The process is relatively simple: The deceased is placed in a vessel with natural materials that create the conditions necessary for composting. But Spade had to navigate technical and legal hurdles to turn the idea into a business, starting a new industry within the funeral home.
Science and law
Stewart and Spade both come to fight to make human manure in the form of horses. When Stewart’s pets die, he wraps them in linen and buries them in his land to naturally decompose into soil in a process similar to composting.
During his research, Spade found a video about horse compost from Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, chair of Washington State University’s Department of Plant and Earth Sciences. Carpenter-Boggs specializes in this practice, which is often used on livestock such as cattle and horses. Spade wanted to improve the way of people, and the two began to collaborate.
They developed a strategy to use stainless steel containers and a combination of hay, alfalfa and wood chips.
“We determined … the best kind of recipe for plant material that would have the right balance of carbon and nitrogen, and the right structural properties for aeration, because oxygen is essential to this process,” Spade said.
The vessels include thermometers to ensure that the body reaches and maintains a temperature of 131 degrees Fahrenheit for three consecutive days to destroy bacteria. Heat is produced entirely by naturally occurring bacteria.
Before Spade could use the technology, he had another problem to solve. He was contacted by Tanya Marsh, a professor and expert in human remains law, who informed Spade that his system was “absolutely illegal” in all 50 states, but offered to help him change that.
Spade then turned to his Seattle neighbor, Sen. Jamie Pedersen, who was pursuing another climate-friendly last resort called alkaline hydrolysis or water cremation. Pedersen sponsored legislation to legalize composting, and it passed in 2019 with bipartisan support, paving the way for Recompose.
An unexpected complaint
Recompose has created a space that Spade hopes is a comfort to grieving friends and families. The center has a living room with the deceased, wrapped in natural linen, and a memorial area with a vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows in green and gold.
Beyond that is the “greenhouse,” a smelly area of soil and grass with 33 composting vessels. Making active compost takes about one month; the resulting soil is then removed to “cure” for an additional month to cool and dry. Bones are mechanically broken down and returned to the soil, while inorganic materials such as artificial joints are recycled.
The process creates 20 to 30 bags of mulch-like material. Friends and families take more of their own accord, and Recompose can contribute to its partners in the restoration and preservation of the earth.
Other cremation companies include Return Home and Earth Funeral, both based in the Seattle area.
Interest in hospice choices has been incredibly broad.
“I really thought this would be for Seattle residents who drive Subarus, and they are,” said Micah Truman, founder and CEO of Return Home. “But we get as many people from Eastern Washington in ruby-red as we do from Seattle or Bellevue.”
While liberals are drawn to the benefits of climate change, conservative farmers and hunters often feel a deep connection to returning to the land, Truman said. A third of clients simply find traditional burial and cremation frightening.
Younger generations have opted in
At an unexpected time, young adults also enter. Elyssa Tappero, a 30-something tsunami program manager in Washington state, finances her $7,000 Recompose service in monthly installments of $100.
“When I learned how much of an environmental impact there is with cremation, and how expensive some of those things are – and the whole way the funeral industry operates – I knew that wasn’t what I wanted,” Tappero said.
Spade realizes that tackling climate change requires bigger actions than human manure, but he’s determined to do his part.
“If we can really and in a meaningful way change the funeral industry, the way we take care of our bodies, and … connect people more with the fact that we are part of that natural process, we are part of the natural environment, that would be very satisfying,” he said.
Sources and references
Discussions:
- Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose
- Micah Truman, founder and CEO of Return Home
- Elyssa Tappero, Recompose customer and tsunami program manager for the Washington Emergency Management Division
Additional sources:
- Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, chair of the Department of Plant and Earth Sciences at Washington State University
- Inside Recompose, a composting startup poised to expand its formula beyond Seattle (GeekWire)
- 50+ and Not Filtering with Shawn Killinger, Episode 124 with Martha Stewart
- The ecological value of cremation (National Geographic)
- The Power of Our Decay: The Graveyard That Saved America (Smithsonian)
