Human Composting Explained: Safety, Cost, and Where It’s Legal Now

If you died tomorrow, could you legally become soil?

For most Americans, the answer is still no. But the fact that this is even a realistic question tells you how quickly human composting – formally Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) – has moved from thought experiment to third mainstream option alongside burial and cremation.

In other pieces I’ve written on end-of-life choices – Space Memorials Explained: What Really Goes to Space, What It Costs, and How It Works, Beyond Burial vs. Cremation: A Practical Guide to Today’s End-of-Life Options, and How Can I Become a Fossil? A Realist’s Guide to Geologic Legacy – NOR has played a supporting role next to spaceflights, reefs, and speculative geologic fantasies. Here, I want to put human composting at center stage: explain what it is, why it exists, what actually happens to a body, and how it fits into the larger menu of modern farewells.

1. What is human composting, exactly?

Human composting is a controlled process that uses microbes, oxygen, and plant material to transform a body into soil in a matter of weeks.

The modern version has a specific origin story. Architect Katrina Spade looked at industrial carcass composting – farmers have been composting whole cows and chickens for years – and asked a simple question: if we can safely compost livestock, why not humans?

Working with researchers at Washington State University, Spade’s team tested a carefully balanced mix of wood chips, straw, and alfalfa packed around human donors in sealed vessels. With temperature, airflow, and moisture tuned just right, thermophilic microbes heated each vessel to well over 130°F, breaking down soft tissue and much of the skeleton into rich soil in a few weeks.

From there, the idea moved out of the lab. Spade founded Recompose in Seattle; soon after, Return Home in Washington and Earth Funeral, with facilities in Washington and Nevada, launched their own versions.

Today, NOR is legal in roughly 13 U.S. states, including Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada, New York, Vermont, Maine, Maryland, Delaware, Arizona, Minnesota, and Georgia (with details and effective dates varying by state).

So what happens when a family chooses NOR?

2. What actually happens to a body in NOR?

The details vary by provider, but the basic flow looks like this.

Preparation and placementThe body arrives at a NOR facility and is placed in a private, reusable vessel roughly the size of a small car or large horizontal fridge. It rests on a “bed” of carbon-rich material like wood chips, straw, and alfalfa, then is completely covered with the same mix.

Active composting (about 30–60 days)Inside the sealed vessel, a fan system pulls in oxygen and circulates air. Microbes already present on the body and in the plant materials ramp up, creating heat as they metabolize. Temperatures climb into the 130–160°F range – perfect for fast decomposition and pathogen reduction.

Bone and metal handlingAfter the active phase, there may still be larger bone fragments and any implants. Providers remove medical hardware and use equipment similar to a crematory’s “cremulator” to gently reduce remaining bones to small fragments, which go back into the vessel for a curing period.

Curing and testing (another 2–4+ weeks)The material cures like any other compost, stabilizing and cooling. In Washington, for example, NOR operators must test each batch for heavy metals plus either fecal coliform or salmonella, and meet specific limits before the soil can be released.

Soil returned or donatedIn the end, a single person yields about a cubic yard of soil – hundreds of pounds, enough to fill the bed of a pickup truck. Families can keep some for gardens or trees, and many providers offer land-restoration projects where the rest can be donated.

I sometimes think of this as soil-forward deathcare: the body isn’t just disposed of, it’s intentionally routed back into ecological cycles.

3. Why did we invent this? The problem with our current defaults

NOR didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a response to very specific pain points in today’s deathcare.

Cremation’s carbon footprint

Cremation has quietly become the default in the U.S., with the national rate now above 60% and projected to keep rising. But it’s not as “light” as it feels:

• Each flame cremation uses a significant amount of fuel and emits roughly 540 pounds of CO₂ on average.

• With nearly two million cremations per year, that adds up to around a billion pounds of CO₂ annually in the U.S. alone.

• Dental amalgam and other metals can release mercury and other pollutants when burned.

When I dug into this in Beyond Burial vs. Cremation, it was clear that “just cremate me” is often shorthand for “please don’t make a fuss,” not an informed environmental choice.

Burial, embalming, and toxicity

Traditional American burial often depends on embalming with formaldehyde-based fluids, metal or hardwood caskets, and concrete vaults in manicured cemeteries.

• Formaldehyde is now classified as a human carcinogen, with studies showing elevated leukemia and some other cancer risks among embalmers.

• Cemeteries represent long-term single-use land, and lawn-style designs require ongoing inputs of fuel, water, and chemicals.

  
  

Decarbonization always starts at the edges – new materials, new regulations, new consumer expectations – before it becomes the default. Deathcare is simply the next industry facing that shift.

Demand for greener choices

Consumers are already signaling they’re ready. The NFDA’s 2025 Consumer Awareness and Preferences Report found that 61.4% of respondents are interested in “green” funeral options, up significantly from around the mid-50s just a few years earlier.

NOR isn’t the only response, but it is one of the clearest: a process designed from the ground up to keep carbon and nutrients in the soil instead of the atmosphere.

4. Is human composting safe?

The big fear people raise is pathogens: what happens if someone dies of an infectious disease?

The short answer: properly run NOR facilities borrow their biosecurity logic from agricultural composting, where millions of diseased animals have already been processed without causing downstream outbreaks.

• USDA guidance for avian influenza requires compost windrows to reach at least 131°F (55°C) for 72 hours in each of two phases; at those temperatures, the virus is effectively inactivated.

• Reviews of carcass composting during livestock disease outbreaks have concluded that, when properly managed, composting is a biosecure way to handle large volumes of infected animals.

  
  

NOR operators track temperatures inside each vessel and are required in states like Washington to test finished compost for pathogens and metals before it leaves the facility.

Some diseases are excluded entirely. Recompose, for example, will not accept bodies with Ebola, active tuberculosis, or prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob, because those pathogens can potentially survive even in a hot compost pile.

Some soil scientists still advise against using human-derived compost on food crops, out of caution and cultural comfort, but the general consensus in the literature is that NOR soil, handled according to current rules, is very unlikely to pose a risk.

5. What does it feel like for families?

Science Vs reporting from Micah Truman’s Return Home facility captured what I’ve heard from a number of NOR families: it’s less creepy and more tangible than they expected.

A few common themes show up:

• Touch and smell. When the vessel is opened after the process, the material looks and smells like a forest floor after rain. People run their fingers through it the way they might touch a loved one’s hair.

• New rituals. Families tuck notes, flowers, or favorite objects (within safety rules) into the vessel. One son reportedly buckled his mother’s soil into the passenger seat for the drive home.

• Land, not marble. Instead of a single headstone, someone might end up as part of a forest restoration project or a ring of Japanese maples in friends’ yards around Seattle.

  
  

If cremation is about dispersal and traditional burial is about location, NOR is about integration – becoming part of a living landscape.

6. Where does NOR stand next to aquamation and green burial?

For families trying to make sense of options, it helps to see NOR as part of a trio of “lighter footprint” choices.

Human composting (NOR)

• Process: Enclosed composting with plant material → soil.

• Environmental profile: Keeps carbon and nutrients in soil; energy use is primarily for ventilation, monitoring, and facility operations.

• Cost: Roughly $5,000–$7,000 depending on provider and services.

  
  

Aquamation (alkaline hydrolysis)

• Process: Warm water and alkaline chemicals accelerate the breakdown of soft tissue; bones are then processed and returned like cremated remains.

• Environmental profile: Much lower direct CO₂ than flame cremation; uses energy and water, but without combustion emissions.

  
  

Green / natural burial

• Process: Simple burial in a shroud or biodegradable coffin, usually without embalming, often in conservation or natural cemeteries.

• Environmental profile: No combustion, minimal materials, and potential benefits to local ecosystems when done in conservation-focused sites.

  
  

The “right” choice depends on how a family weighs land, ritual, cost, and comfort. What matters is that these options are finally being discussed as peers to the 20th-century default.

7. The legal map

Now, back to that map – just briefly.

As of mid-2025, NOR has been legalized in around thirteen U.S. states, including Washington (the first, in 2019), Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, California, New York, Nevada, Maine, Maryland, Delaware, Arizona, Minnesota, and Georgia, with New Jersey and others considering bills.

Dignity Memorial’s national overview is blunt: even in those states, availability can lag far behind legality, and many families still ship remains to Washington or Colorado to access an operational facility.

For funeral homes and entrepreneurs, this is less about scarcity and more about timing. In other industries (including the sustainability plays I’ve written about elsewhere), the people who learn the new option early – before it’s universally available – become the trusted guides when demand spikes.

8. What to do with this, practically

If you’re a funeral professional or hospice clinician:

• Offer a clear, jargon-free comparison of NOR, aquamation, and green burial for your specific state, building on the broader framework from Beyond Burial vs. Cremation.

• Build relationships now with NOR providers so you can coordinate cross-state logistics instead of losing the family when someone says, “I heard about human composting – can we do that?”

• Train your staff to talk about soil-forward deathcare in plain language. People can handle the word “compost” if you ground it in science and ritual.

  
  

If you’re an individual pre-planning:

• Decide where NOR sits relative to cremation, aquamation, and green burial in your own values.

• Write it down. Whether your first choice is to become soil, ride a rocket, or rest under an oak tree, clarity is the greatest gift you can leave to the people who will be making decisions on your behalf.

  
  

Your final act might be the first piece of climate tech your family ever directly participates in.

Excerpted with permission from The Frictionless Press.Also cross-published on the author’s LinkedIn and Medium accounts.

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Excerpted with permission from The Frictionless Press. Also cross-published on the author’s LinkedIn and Medium accounts. View in video format on our YouTube channel.

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