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United States Government

Washington Becomes First State To Legalize Human Composting (apnews.com) 145

Posted by BeauHD from the natural-processes dept.
Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation Tuesday making Washington the first state to approve composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains. The Associated Press reports: It allows licensed facilities to offer "natural organic reduction," which turns a body, mixed with substances such as wood chips and straw, into about two wheelbarrows' worth of soil in a span of several weeks. Loved ones are allowed to keep the soil to spread, just as they might spread the ashes of someone who has been cremated -- or even use it to plant vegetables or a tree.

Supporters say the method is an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation, which releases carbon dioxide and particulates into the air, and conventional burial, in which people are drained of their blood, pumped full of formaldehyde and other chemicals that can pollute groundwater, and placed in a nearly indestructible coffin, taking up land. State law previously dictated that remains be disposed of by burial or cremation. The law, which takes effect in May 2020, added composting as well as alkaline hydrolysis, a process already legal in 19 other states. The latter uses heat, pressure, water and chemicals like lye to reduce remains.
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Washington Becomes First State To Legalize Human Composting More

Washington Becomes First State To Legalize Human Composting

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  • All the toxins in my body (Score:3)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @03:13AM (#58634574)
    won't do the flowerbeds to remember me any good. It will be nothing than a barren heap of soil where nothing but weed grows. Maybe some RoundUp will be able to deal with that.

  • American burial (Score:5, Informative)

    by raburton ( 1281780 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @03:27AM (#58634590) Homepage

    A body doesn't need to be "pumped full of formaldehyde" and "placed in a nearly indestructible coffin" to be buried, that's just how they like to do it in America. Embalming comes from the desire to have an open casket so you can have a good look at the dead body (heavily made up), which is a concept alien to a lot of the world - it freaked my parents out when they once went to an American funeral while on holiday. The EU are banning most embalming chemicals, it was recently in the news here but it wasn't a big story in the UK because it's so rare.
    The extreme coffin I assume comes from the desire to be able to charge a fortune for a funeral and good marketing to convince families this is the only appropriate way to do things. British coffins are tidy, nice looking things, but ultimately a simple wood construction.
    In the UK embalming would be quite unusual and coffins are will likely rot away no more slowly than the body. Of course we'll run out of space to bury people a long time before you do in America, so we need that but I don't think you need to worry just yet.

    • Re:American burial (Score:5, Informative)

      by Shane_Optima ( 4414539 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @03:48AM (#58634636) Journal
      Obligatory link to The American Way of Death [wikipedia.org], which one of the first times this was called out and challenged. I believe the book eventually led to reforms being enacted allowing people to obtain lower-cost burials. I'm be curious to know how much the funeral home industry lobbied against this particular law as well.

      It's just of the many, many industries that are completely ossified and controlled by cynical rent-seekers [wikipedia.org]. It would be so nice to see a libertarian candidate that actually cared about removing the thousands of pointless and harmful laws out there instead of basically being just a Republican who smokes weed and doesn't like wars.
      • is they're franchises. Seriously, like most American companies one parent company owns nearly all of the mortuaries. Mickey D(eath)'s.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by anegg ( 1390659 )

        Save your relatives a lot of grief. Clearly document your post-life body disposition wishes, and pre-arrange as much as you can while you can. You will be able to negotiate better in your current state of mind than those you leave behind in theirs immediately following your death.

        My mom HAD written out her wishes, but we didn't find them until I was cleaning out her house after the funeral, etc. Fortunately, we already knew she wanted to be cremated. Unfortunately, we didn't know she wanted to pass on

        • Save your relatives a lot of grief. Clearly document your post-life body disposition wishes, and pre-arrange as much as you can while you can. You will be able to negotiate better in your current state of mind than those you leave behind in theirs immediately following your death.

          My mom HAD written out her wishes, but we didn't find them until I was cleaning out her house after the funeral, etc. Fortunately, we already knew she wanted to be cremated. Unfortunately, we didn't know she wanted to pass on the whole funeral home wake, body at the church service before cremation. The funeral home charges ended up being over $6,000 because one of my siblings was making snap decisions that he was led into by the funeral home immediately following her passing, before I could get there from out of state. Probably two thirds of what was done (embalming, viewing, body transport to church for service before cremation) was unnecessary from multiple perspectives: honoring her wishes (if we had known what they were), honoring her memory, and giving people the chance to grieve. If she had pre-arranged things (or even made her wishes clear, or at least a lot easier to find) the funeral home would have played a much smaller role.

          One of the kindest, most generous things you can do for the ones you leave behind is to work out as much as you can beforehand and make your plans clearly known. If those you leave behind want to supplement your plans with their own observations and practices, that's up to them. They'll clearly know "what you wanted".

          The guy at the funeral home we used for my mom turned out to be the same guy we used for my dad 30 years earlier. While we were debating over which was the right casket for her he told us "Your mom doesn't care about any of this. The crate those caskets came in would be fine. This stuff is all for the living".

    • Re:American burial (Score:4, Funny)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @03:51AM (#58634648) Journal

      it freaked my parents out when they once went to an American funeral while on holiday

      Would you be able to give me the name of your parents travel agents?

      • it freaked my parents out when they once went to an American funeral while on holiday

        Would you be able to give me the name of your parents travel agents?

        I should have added that we have quite a bit of family in the States and while visiting some they were invited to a family members funeral. No idea if they actually knew the particular family member before they died, but I guess it would have been awkward to so no to such a kind offer.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @06:49AM (#58634974)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: American burial (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The funeral industry is a dying business.

        (will see myself out now)

        • Extremely discriminatory too! Cemeteries in hundreds of cities that won't let anyone who lives there be buried in them!

      • A body doesn't need to be "pumped full of formaldehyde" and "placed in a nearly indestructible coffin" to be buried, that's just how they like to do it in America.

        Seem to recall a similar system was used in Egypt.....

        Got a bit more contemporary reference than ancient Egypt? I didn't say no one else does this (or that something similar can't be found historically), just made the point that what is described as "conventional burial" (in the US, as the article is about) is just one situation of burial, but that burying the dead does not actually require formaldehyde or an indestructible coffin, as proven in plenty of other places.

        According to industry figures obtained by TIME, cremation surpassed traditional burial rates for the first time in the U.S., a milestone in the transformation of the $16 billion death industry decades in the making. http://time.com/4425172/cremat... [time.com]

        Trying to make a point by quoting something unrelated to the comment does actually achieve tha

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sh00z ( 206503 )

          Got a bit more contemporary reference than ancient Egypt? I didn't say no one else does this (or that something similar can't be found historically), just made the point that what is described as "conventional burial" (in the US, as the article is about) is just one situation of burial, but that burying the dead does not actually require formaldehyde or an indestructible coffin, as proven in plenty of other places.

          Natural burial is legal in all 50 states. It's a constitutionally-protected freedom for which we can thank Orthodox Jews. The funeral industry will do everything in their power to try to convince you that you MUST spend $10-15,000 to have a loved one interred, but it's simply not true. Do your homework ahead of time. Don't do anything stupid (a family I know ended up paying for embalming AND cremation). Put your wishes in a Directive for Disposition of Remains, to be kept with your will, and make damn sure

        • I didn't say no one else does this (or that something similar can't be found historically), just made the point that what is described as "conventional burial" (in the US, as the article is about) is just one situation of burial, but that burying the dead does not actually require formaldehyde or an indestructible coffin, as proven in plenty of other places.

          I married a Brazilian. When my mother-in-law's health started going down hill we rushed to the closest consulate (2 states over) to renew my wife's passport so she could say a proper farewell. My mother-in-law passed away as we pulled into the consulate's parking lot (my wife was on the phone with her at the time). Because of the way things are done down there, my mother-in-law was in the ground the very next morning. Needless to say my wife couldn't make it to the funeral (19+ hour flight). Most Brazilian

      • Seem to recall a similar system was used in Egypt.....

        For 0.00000001% of the population. Perhaps less.

      • and high ranking officials. e.g. the rank and file poor didn't use a bunch of chemicals and then bury them in a trap ladened pyramid for Indiana Jones to explore. At best the wrapped them in a shall with some food.

        And when my mom was cremated I had to pay $300 for a cardboard box to do it in. They wanted to sell me a $1000 pressboard box as the "cheap" option and really wanted me to blow $5 grand on an ornate pine coffin they would proceed to burn to ashes. I also remember her church buddies were upset

    • There's also a lot of denial involved. If you embalm your loved one, have them put into an expensive coffin, and have that put into an underground vault - then maybe they're not really dead? Or something?

      At the cemetery where my parents are buried, I found the vaults to be particularly silly. From the cemetery's perspective, they keep the grass level. If you had a coffin that decayed, the ground would sink, and would have to be topped up or evened out periodically. Dreadful.

      I dunno what the actual laws are,

    • OK, going to a funeral while on holiday is freaky! Seems anathema to the definition of holiday.

      i live in America. I want to be buried naturally in a shroud without the whole side show. I want an Oak acorn planted above me and then, that's it. I can do this via my will...

      That said, I did the eulogies for both my mother's parents (in the last 2 years) and doing so was very powerful for everyone. It was difficult, and important to do it in person with the people they knew (that were still alive). Noting

    • Natural Burials are legal in the US. Currently the trendy name is "Green Burials" but even for most open casket funerals, we do not need to be embalmed, nor are they required to be. Embalming is only necessary if the body is going to be on display for weeks, otherwise it is just as handy to keep the body on ice. A lot of funeral directors usually insist on embalming as a way to up-charge for their services, as much of the cost of is covered by life insurance. And pressured by people who are already greevin

    • The concrete vault bit is due to liability. Caskets decompose, causing the ground to become unstable. One kid falls into a collapsed grave and you get sued out of existence. Of course, just wrapping a body up in cloth and burying it wouldn't cause this, but funeral lobbies are fairly powerful (caskets and burial vaults are a big business) and it's illegal to do that in most states.

      • Wrap the body in cloth with a fruit or other tree seed, and you won't see the ground go down at all. The tree will eat the body.

        • I don't know my local ordinances, but I know if I dig down 2-3 feet the hole fills with groundwater. That's gotta raise issues. And what sort of tree would you plant in a grid, spaced about 6 ft. apart? The silly complications are leading me back to composting.

    • This was exactly my question. If being buried with an apple in a plain wooden casket with no embalming was good enough for Rhode Island hero Roger Williams, why isn't it good enough for you?

      Obref: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2210 [roadsideamerica.com]

      The real answer: Governor Inslee is running for the Democratic Primary on a climate change platform, despite being the governor that allowed Seattle to turn into the carbon producer it is. He needs this for virtue signaling.

    • I hate open casket funerals, I really don't see the point. However many people absolutely prefer them and a lot of it is cultural. The catholic hispanic family that lived next door to my father went to see his body at the funeral home every day before the funeral, bringing their granddaughter who was especially fond of him. But at the funeral at the end when the opened the coffin for a brief viewing, which I only saw from an angle, it felt like a punch in my gut and nothing about it helped the grieving pro

  • One step forward (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rande ( 255599 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @03:33AM (#58634608) Homepage

    "It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks, and become one with all the people."

    Chairman Sheng-ji Yang - Ethics for Tomorrow

    We'll get there eventually.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.

    • Oh, I hadn't realized that Sid Meier had used Helstrom's Hive in his work. Thanks for the info!

  • The legislators in the state of Washington failed to prohibit using human bodies which are tainted with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease [mayoclinic.org] (CJD).

    Though the risk of being infected with CJD is low, the staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are still very concerned about it and have published recommendations [cdc.gov] for handling corpses that are tainted with CJD.

  • The next step... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by magusxxx ( 751600 ) <magusxxx_2000@yaOPENBSDhoo.com minus bsd> on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @03:49AM (#58634640)

    ...put a little bit of the ashes in a memorial keychain so our loved ones can always be with us. Can't wait to go through the basket at Goodwill.

    Or sell them at auction like the Ferengi do on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

    • Screw ashes, turn your dead loved one into a gemstone:
      https://www.lifegem.com/ [lifegem.com]

    • ...put a little bit of the ashes in a memorial keychain

      Blockchain?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        ...put a little bit of the ashes in a memorial keychain

        Blockchain?

        Unless the relative was a complete moron. Or named Charlie Brown. Then it would be blockheadchain.

  • Hey guys, I figured out how to take care of the overpopulation problem in Seattle!

  • Only in the USA can this, and pumping bodies with formaldehyde, be an actual thing.

    Love to see me mum chopped up and mixed with wood and other crap in my wheelbarrow ready for composting. Oh yeah son... lowering the pollution bitch !

    Or draining her blood and pumping her up full of formaldehyde.
    Not sure which idea is more American.
    • Having laws that require a (state) licensed mortician to "pump bodies full of formaldehyde" BEFORE they are cremated is "most American".

    • Only in the USA can this, and pumping bodies with formaldehyde, be an actual thing.

      Love to see me mum chopped up and mixed with wood and other crap in my wheelbarrow ready for composting. Oh yeah son... lowering the pollution bitch !

      .

      Actually, the body is not chopped up and sent home to compost. The composting is done in designated facilities and the resulting soil is sent home weeks later. Considering the sensibilities in the US, I can't imagine chopping up the body to accelerate the composting process, either.

      On a side note, my scout group discovered the skeleton of a man who had died a decade prior (we were digging a latrine); how do they propose composting bones within weeks?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Bones don't break down from composting that quickly. I wonder what they do about that in WA. I think Promessa in Sweden uses cryogenic freezing before composting to promote disintegration.

    • You're missing the part where they put the corpse through a giant pulverizer to mechanically reduce it to a stew of human remains.

  • and send 'em to Resyk.

  • ...decompositing in a grave in a cemetery. Let the worms do their job.

  • ... composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains.

    Or -- and I'm not making this up -- freeze drying [nypost.com] (also known as promession [wikipedia.org].

    [Just don't take the results home and add hot water ...]

  • Y'all who are so eager to annihilate your dead bodies are gonna be sorry when nantech brings the dead back to life in 100 years.

    • Does modern embalming even leave the organs in place? The neural connections will be gone by the time of your funeral either way, let alone be able to be resurrected with nanotech.
  • Let the buzzards eat me, I say. They'll feed the soil on the next go-round.

  • You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying, organic matter as everything else.

    • Nice! I just watched Fight Club again last night on Crackle.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        I am Jack's gaping psychological wounds. I am Jack's fatherless society. Such a poignant movie for what it was trying to say.

        Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.

        Dies irae agnus Dei

  • CEMETARIES!!! There's another idea whose time has passed! Saving all the dead people up for one part of town?! What the hell kind of a medieval, superstitious, religious, bullshit idea is that?! Plough these motherfuckers up, plough into the streams and rivers of America; we need that phosphorous for farming! If we're going to recycle, LET'S GET SERIOUS!!!

    — George Carlin, 1992

    • problem with those "fixed" proteins of embalmed corpses though, even germs won't eat them. You'll have chunks of your friends and loved ones floating around in those rivers, and the phoshorous stays locked up.

  • Anyone else reminded of the "recycling" pit in waterworld?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Not a great movie, but it had its moments.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @10:51AM (#58635894)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I hope they made it retroactive so I don't have to worry about all the bodies I have rotting in my cellar.

  • ... conventional burial, in which people are drained of their blood, pumped full of formaldehyde and other chemicals that can pollute groundwater, and placed in a nearly indestructible coffin, taking up land.

    There are plenty of conventional burial options that don't involve this level of mummification. Burial traditions in Orthodox Judaism and other faiths & cultures emphasize returning the body naturally to the earth. Only the U.S. funeral-industrial complex has pushed this vision of "conventional burial" as the norm during the last century, as if formaldehyde is going to matter on Judgment Day if we're all getting new bodies when the Last Trumpet sounds.

    "Organic" burial locks carbon in the earth, and memo

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • So can I just use the green bin for this? Maybe hop in myself when the time seems near. Though hopefully collection day will be soon after.

  • ... think of the poor, starving pigs?

  • That way, I can have my ashes disposed of [youtube.com] in a meaningful and symbolic way.

    • I didn't spend all these years recycling and planting trees just so I couldn't have the satisfaction of a bit of coal-rolling at the very end.

      Besides, shit is for microbes. I'm a sentient being who spent so much time dealing with technology, and fire is one of the most primal technologies there is.

  • Dead-flavored veggies

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