Burial and cremation are no longer the only two options we have in deciding what happens to us at the end of life, as turning your body into compost is gaining legal status across the world.
Officially known as "natural organic reduction" (NOR), this month a state in Australia, New South Wales (NSW) became the country's first to adopt this practice – but it's not entirely new.
In the US, Washington state became the first of the 50 to leagalize this kind of burial, in May 2019, followed by Colorado (May 2021) and Oregon (July 2021). Since then, 11 other states have allowed this option. In fact, it was the Seattle company Recompose that pioneered the movement in the US.
In 2023, the BBC reported that NOR is legal throughout Sweden, but confirmation of the specifics is hard to track down through official channels.
So why is this sort of "burial" growing in popularity? Essentially, both cremation and coffin-burial practices are pretty bad for the environment. Which may not really be a concern once you're gone, but composting has no such impact. In fact, it's the opposite.
NOR involves wrapping a body in cotton or it being placed in a biodegradable coffin made of something like wicker or willow. Or, as a UK a biotech startup has developed, a mushroom box, known as the Loop Living Cocoon. It's the world's first mushroom coffin, too.
And because this kind of "burial" doesn't involve embalming chemicals or other toxins, the body breaks down naturally – basically how burials existed since humans have lived on Earth, until we developed ways to preserve the dead for funerals or built furnaces.
While deep-ground coffin burials are said to have become common practice during the bubonic plague (where mass graves were also involved), there's a lot of debate about why this was – from preventing animals from digging up diseased bodies to discouraging grave-robbers. Coffin burials date back even further, but historians have many hyphotheses for why the tradition has carried through to today.
A NOR burial, however, involves a shallower gravesite, of around 3-4 feet (1 meter), also considered the "living layer" of the soil. Basically, where whatever grows above the ground sources its nutrients from. It's also the prime location for oxygen, microbes and fungal networks get to work to break down soft tissue that infuses into the soil.
Importantly, it's also at a depth that decomposition smells remain sealed underground, and it's too deep for animals to readily dig up. Yes, a bizarre kind of Goldilocks zone.
However, much like the composting you might do for your home garden, this kind of burial also involves a system that rotates the body, which is also encased in materials like woodchips and straw, essentially turning all organic matter to ideal soil fertilizer in about 10 weeks.
As this report covered earlier this year, natural burials in the UK and the US are rapidly increasing. Even those who have succumbed to cancer are able to be sent off like this, since toxic chemotherapy drugs are usually long gone from the body by the time of passing. As of 2024, only those who had died from ebola, tuberculosis and diseases caused by pathogenic agents linked to brain protein irregularities, were unable to be "buried" this way.
Now, it's understandable if this new burial style seems at best strange and at worst maybe disrespectful. But many of us have buried our beloved pets in our yards beneath new trees as an alternative to cremation. So why not the same for humans?
One of the key issues has been cultural and religious barriers. In 2020, a soil scientist from Washington State University addressed this, shortly after Seattle founded the first US company, Recompose, to commercialize NOR.
"The main issues that people may have are religious concerns," said Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, who was also an advisor to Recompose at the time. "There are a lot of people for whom there's only one type of acceptable practice after death. So, it's primarily just a process of dialoguing and being humble, open, and transparent about the process."
After the body has completely undergone the composting process, what's left looks just like any other organic material you'd add to your garden. So, no, you're not going to be digging up potatoes and accidentally find remnants of Grandma.
"Physically, you would not know the difference between other types of compost," Carpenter-Boggs said at the time. "What you see is some remnants of the plant material, so some of the straw and wood chips and shavings that were in there. All of it has darkened somewhat because of the development of humic acids. But it smells pleasant, it looks just like compost."
And at this point, the compost is ready to boost your garden's yield or fuel the memorial tree or plants you might instead have in place as a tribute.
So, would you consider this for yourself – or a loved one? We'd love to hear what you think.
Source: NSW Parliament