You Can Help Restore the Environment After You Die. By Turning Into Soil?

There are already some ways to deal with dead bodies like the most common practices, that are burials, cremation, and a novel method called "aquamation", and now there is another one called "recomposition" where you can choose to become compost.

Recompose, the first funeral home that turns dead bodies into compost is launched just outside of Seattle, and started to turn its customers into soil, reported EcoWatch.

Katrina Spade, the founder of Recompose, has spent years trying to come up with a solution to what to do with dead bodies other than following traditional ways. Since 2011, Spade has refined her own solution to the matter, “natural organic reduction”.

“After you die, your body will be laid into the vessel onto a bed of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. Over the next 30 days, everything inside the vessel breaks down thanks to natural decomposition. The soil is removed and placed into a curing bin, where it is aerated for several more weeks. Then, it can be donated for conservation efforts or given back to the person of your choosing,” Recompose's website reads.

In an unusual way, the dead body, as well as wood chips, straw, and alfalfa, a perennial flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae, are placed into a container, which provides the optimal amount of heat, water, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen for decomposition. Naturally-occurring microbes break the body down over the next 30 days. The resulting soil (about 1 cubic yard worth) dries for two weeks to a month before it’s distributed to families or donated to an ecological restoration project. 

Anna Swenson, the outreach manager of Recompose told Colorado Newsline that the $5,500 price includes “the transformation into soil, the opportunity to keep or donate the soil, a virtual ceremony facilitated by our staff, the death certificate, and everything that you would expect from a funeral home at the end of life."  

The environmental appeal of Recompose is also important for the planet. Each body that is composted, instead of buried conventionally or cremated, saves 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the company. 

The company currently accommodates 10 bodies but plans to increase the number to 40 by the end of this year.

We have gone from burying the dead to burning them, and now we can turn them into water or soil. The next step of how we deal with dead bodies seems to be sending them to outer space.