Colorado legalizes human composting

I’ve said all along that as death care moves forward there will continue to be full service funeral homes, but there will also be a growing niche of death care disposition options available to the consumer public.

Just last week Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a bill into law that will make Colorado the second state in the United States to legalize human composting as a legal form of disposition of a dead human body.  The process of Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) involves placing a body in a vessel with straw, alfalfa, and woodchips to hasten decomposition into a soil.

A couple of interesting codicils about the new Colorado law include that the soil may not be sold and the soil may not be used to grow food for human consumption.  The law will be effective 90 days after the Colorado legislative session ends.

Human recomposition was first legalized in the State of Washington in May 2020 with the first commercial enterprise, Recompose, opened for business in late 2020.  To date there are at least three enterprises we know of in Washington offering, or about to, offer the services.  Funeral Director Daily expects the Colorado law to bring on the same type of economic development for the service in Colorado.

Here are the websites of Washington operators:

  1. Recompose
  2. Return Home
  3. Herland Forest

EXTRA EDITION — For a little extra viewing and knowledge going into the weekend, Funeral Director Daily brings you Funeral Nation #224 with hosts Jeff Harbeson and Ryan Thogmartin.  I happen to make my quarterly appearance on Funeral Nation with my take and insight on the public companies in the death care realm and their year end earnings reports.  Jeff and Ryan spend the first nine minutes of the show with a give and take on Conventions and Non-Conventions from our covid year of 2020 when everything was different.  My episode starts at about the 9:00 minute mark.  Enjoy the Show!!

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