By Beth A. McDaniel, JD, CELA
On Monday, March 27, 2023, my colleague Megan Farr and I met at Recompose for a 5:00 PM tour. For those that are not familiar, Recompose is a full-service, green funeral home located just south of downtown Seattle.
Recompose, which opened in August 2020, first in Kent, Washington, and now in Seattle, Washington, is the first human composting company in the world.
During the composting process, the human body, surrounded by wood chips, alfalfa, and straw, becomes one cubic yard of soil within eight to twelve weeks. Prior to becoming soil, teeth and bones are ground and titanium parts are donated. All or part of the soil can be picked up by family and the remainder is donated to Bell Mountain, a 700-acre nonprofit trust located in southern Washington.
Recompose currently offer tours to the public on Fridays at 5 PM and on Saturdays at 1:00 PM. When I turned on to the street where Recompose is located, I wondered whether I would be able to find it as not all the street numbers on the buildings were clearly visible; however, the large earthythemed collage on the side of Recompose’s building made the small street number on its front door superfluous.
The Tour. The interior of the building is decorated in soothing earth tones.
Each meeting room off the reception area is named after a tree. The midcentury furnishings make it cozy and timeless. The wall behind the reception area is covered with an amazing array of mosses and the reception desk itself looks like it was built out of reclaimed wood. We were told that the large photos displayed throughout the building were taking at Bell Mountain.
On arrival, the tour participants were invited to go into the largest meeting room off the entry to help ourselves to a tray of assorted cans and bottles of still and sparkling water. The tour started back in the reception area where it was explained that the first room we were to see was where loved ones are welcomed to spend time with their loved one’s body, followed by the ‘greenhouse’ where the compost vessels are kept.
The tour concluded in the ‘gathering space,’ a long narrow room which can comfortably host twenty-five people. It is in this room where loved ones can hold a ‘laying in’ service, analogous to a graveside service, in which the body is placed into a vessel and the door to the vessel is closed.
It is in this room where loved ones can hold a ‘laying in’ service, analogous to a graveside service, in which the body is placed into a vessel and the door to the vessel is closed. According to staff, there are many ways services are conducted, and they have been presided over by officiants of many different faiths. The body is wrapped in a shroud during the laying in service. Per staff, the face and/or hands can be exposed pursuant to request.
My takeaway. I was impressed and think that human composting is a great alternative to burial or cremation. I was further impressed with the founder Katrina Spade, who has literally created a new death care industry. Human composting was a project of Katrina’s when she was in architecture school. At the time, she wanted to create an urban alternative to green cemeteries. I was pleased that Katrina was one of the two individuals who led my tour. It was meaningful too that Katrina’s parents, brother, sister-in-law, and infant nephew were also on my tour. I was so impressed with Katrina by the end of the tour, that I asked her if Megan and I could have a photo with her.
The Future. I found it interesting to learn that 30% of Recompose’s ‘clients’ (how Katrina described the decedents) are from out of state. Additionally, Katrina said that 25% of the over one thousand individuals who are pre-paying for their recompose plans are under the age of fifty.
A plan costs $7,000, which is obviously more expensive than cremation, but clearly less expensive than burial. The only individuals who are not eligible for recompose are individuals who received radiation seed implants within 30 days of death or whose cause of death were Ebola, prion diseases such as CreutzfeldtJackob Disease, and tuberculosis.
A personal note: my father-in-law’s cause of death, pursuant to an autopsy, was Creutzfeldt-Jackob Disease, whereas his death certificate initially said the cause was Alzheimer’s Disease. I will write more about my beloved father-in-law, a World War II veteran, on another occasion.
In May 2019, human composting became legal in Washington. In May 2021, it became legal in Colorado. In June 2021, it became legal in Oregon. In June 2022, it became legal in Vermont. In September 2022, it became legal in California and will go into effect in January 2027. In December 2022, New York became the sixth U.S. state to make human composting legal. Since January 2023, legislation has been introduced in Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, Maine, Rhode Island, and Minnesota. Clearly human composting is something whose time has come, and it is worth investigating whether it may be right for you or a loved one. For more information, go to https://recompose.life
For more information, or to schedule an appointment, please call 425-251-8880 or email info@bethmcdaniel.com
First Published: April 2023
