What is human composting? Know all about environment-friendly cremation of a body

New Delhi: A new legislation named the human composting law has been approved in New York, which is aimed at a natural organic reduction after death. It means an eco-friendly solution for burial and cremation to transform human remains into the soil. The legislative move by New York Governor Kathy Hochul made the state sixth to legalise the law since 2019. After Hochu signed the law, citizens of New York will now have an eco-friendly and environmentally safe alternative to burial. Washington approved the human composting law in 2019 becoming the first state to do so. Colorado and Oregon legalised it in 2021 and Vermont and California followed suit in 2022.

How does the process work?

During human composting, a dead body is placed in a reusable vessel with biodegradable materials.

Material act as a catalyst in the process of transforming the body into nutrient-dense soil. Then the resulting soil can be returned to loved ones or transferred to the earth elsewhere.

The dead body is not directly put into the compost.

Prior to the composting, the remains must be sent to a cemetery corporation for certification.

Before organically reducing the body into human compost, there are several steps such as checking and preparing the remains are involved.

The dead body should be suitably contained and ventilated. It must not contain a ‘battery, battery pack, power cell, radioactive implant, or radioactive device’ as per a report by Hindustan Times.

How was the process developed?

Composting food and organic fertilizer have been present for centuries. But the notion of actively turning human remains into a usable soil product is nearly a decade old. Katrina Spade, an architecture student, proposed the idea in her graduate thesis in 2013. “Our bodies have nutrients,” she said, “What if we could grow new life after we’ve died?”

As per a report published by Verge, “In her thesis, Spade envisioned a ‘dark, quiet, and safe’ space where the natural work of decomposition could be scaled for an urban population and managed in an industrial setting.”

Several firms are making human composting a reality and developing businesses and attracting investments. The promoters of the process say that it is a gentler way of bidding goodbye to one’s loved ones. There are several religions across the world that claim that humans originated from matter or soil and will return to matter or soil after death.