The world's first funeral home dedicated to composting human remains will open in Washington state in 2021.
'Deathcare' company Recompose has spent the last two years working to bring the concept of human corpse composting, known as natural organic reduction, to the public, marketing it as a gentle and natural alternative to cremation and traditional burial with a significantly smaller carbon footprint.
The plan is finally coming to fruition as design firm Oslon Kundig has released digital renderings of what Recompose's first facility will look like when it opens in less than two years' time.
The site in Seattle's SoDo neighborhood will feature a modular system of 75 reusable, hexagonal 'Recomposition Vessels', arranged in a way that offers a private, peaceful space for loved ones to hold memorial ceremonies or rituals.
Each body will be wrapped in a breathable sheet and sealed in a bathtub-shaped vessel surrounded by wood chips, hay and alfalfa to promote decomposition.
Over the course of four to seven weeks, the moisture and temperature-controlled vessel is rotated to aerate the contents, allowing naturally-occurring bacteria to break down the remains.
The process results in roughly a cubic yard of soil, weighing between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds and filling about two wheelbarrows.
Families will be able to take home the soil and use it as compost, while any unclaimed soil will be donated to reforestation efforts in the area.
The Recompose method was inspired by green burials, where bodies are buried in woodland areas and allowed to decompose naturally.
The firm developed a way to expedite that process and conduct it in urban areas with limited access to natural burial grounds.
Washington became the first US state to explicitly approve natural organic reduction in May of this year.
Supporters say the method is an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation, which releases carbon dioxide and particulates into the air, and conventional burial, in which people are drained of their blood, pumped full of formaldehyde and other chemicals that can pollute groundwater, and placed in a nearly indestructible coffin, taking up land.
'That's a serious weight on the earth and the environment as your final farewell,' Sen Jamie Pedersen, the Seattle Democrat who sponsored the measure, said after it was approved.
Pedersen said the legislation was inspired by his neighbor: Katrina Spade, who was an architecture graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, when she began researching the funeral industry.
She came up with the idea for human composting, modeling it on a practice farmers have long used to dispose of livestock.
'We asked ourselves how we could use nature - which has perfected the life/death cycle - as a model for human death care,' Spade said.
'We saw an opportunity for this profound moment to both give back to the earth and reconnect us with these natural cycles.'
Spade tweaked the livestock disposal process and found that wood chips, alfalfa and straw created a mixture of nitrogen and carbon that accelerates natural decomposition when a body is placed in a temperature and moisture-controlled vessel and rotated.
A pilot project at Washington State University tested the idea last year on six bodies, all donors who Spade said wanted to be part of the study.
In 2017, Spade founded Recompose with the goal of raising nearly $7million to establish a facility in Seattle and begin to expand elsewhere.
Washington's move to approve natural organic reduction not well received by some, according to Pederson.
The state senator said he received several angry emails from people who objected to the idea, calling it undignified or disgusting.
'The image they have is that you're going to toss Uncle Henry out in the backyard and cover him with food scraps,' Pedersen said.
To the contrary, he said, the process will be respectful.
An official opening date for the Recompose site has not yet been announced.
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