More on Recomposition

We informed you a couple of weeks ago that the State of Washington’s House and Senate had approved both the ability for final disposition not only for alkaline hydrolysis, but for “recomposition” or what some refer to as “human composting.

Just the other day we found this article in the Australian publication, The New Daily, that informs us more about the process and how it came to be.  It also tells us of the company formed in the State of Washington named “Recompost” that has been formed to begin commercialization of the process in 2023.

According to the article, the company was founded by architect and anthropologist Katrina Spade who also founded the non-profit Urban Death Project.  The article mentions that Spade has invented a system to transform the dead into soil and that system is now patent pending.

The article points out that “recomposition will gently convert human remains into soil, so that we can nourish new life after we die.”  The process that will take about 30 days will create about a meter of cubic soil per body.

Funeral Director Daily take:  We have said all along that new things will come into the death care business.  It is pretty common now to have alkaline hydrolysis legalized for final disposition along with the old standbys earth burial, entombment, and cremation.  It is our belief that the Washington legalization will start the ball rolling for recomposition as well.  It is quite possible that all states in the United States will have alkaline hydrolysis and recomposition legalized by 2030.

One of the things we noticed in the article was a picture of a recomposition human composter.  It appears to be about 18 feet tall and will require a substantial capital outlay for the installation in order to offer recomposition in this manner.  We also don’t know, and that is probably part of what is patent pending, if the human composter can hold more than one body at a time.  With the duration time from deceased to finished composition product 30 days in length, if the composter we saw handles only one body at a time, it may be an expensive process.

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