“It seems really gentle,” said Christian, 71, a financial adviser. “Comforting and natural.”
A bill before the Washington state Legislature would make this state the first in the nation to explicitly allow human remains to be disposed of and reduced to soil through composting, or what the bill calls recomposition. The prospect has drawn no public opponents in the state capital as yet, but it is a concept that sometimes raises eyebrows.
“There’s almost a revulsion at times, when you talk about human composting,” said Brian Flowers, the managing funeral director at Moles Farewell Tributes, a company north of Seattle that supports the bill.
In truth, composting is an ancient and basic method of body disposal. A corpse in the ground without embalming chemicals or a coffin, or in a quickly biodegradable coffin, becomes soil over time.
But death certificates in many states include a box that must be checked for burial or cremation, with no other options. Aboveground composting, through a mortuary process that requires no burial or burning of remains, is a new category without regulation about how it should be done or what can be done with the compost.
In Washington state, a larger percentage of residents are cremated than in any other state. Washington has more “green cemeteries,” which encourage a return to nature without manicured lawns and chemicals, than most states; only California and New York have more.
“It’s this interesting combination of environmental sensibility and individual choice,” David Sloane, a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California, said of the Northwest region and the prospect of legalized human composting.
Jamie Pedersen, a Democratic state senator from Seattle, is leading efforts to pass the legislation to permit a composting process after death. Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature, and Pedersen said he had enlisted support from Republicans as well. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, has taken no position.
Though the process sounds simple, it would not be cheap. Preliminary estimates suggest that it could cost at least $5,000 — less, perhaps, than an elaborate burial service, but more than the most basic cremation.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.