Warming Trends: Composting the Dead to Help Soils and the Climate, Musk’s Contest to Clean Carbon From the Atmosphere and Posters for Holidays on Flooded Shorelines
A column highlighting climate-related studies, innovations, books, cultural events and other developments from the global warming frontier.
February 13, 2021
In Washington state, a funeral home is offering human composting. After 30 days, a body turns to soil, and can be laid to rest in a forest. Credit Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images
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Where will you go when you die? In Washington state, you could choose your garden.
Recompose, an ecological death care company in Seattle, started offering human composting at the end of 2020. The option became legal in 2019 thanks to efforts by Recompose founder Katrina Spade, who worked with her state senator to pass a bill legalizing “natural organic reduction”—the process that turns human bodies into soil.