First Human Composting Funeral Site To Open In 2021

Seattle’s Sodo neighborhood is a revitalized industrial district with plenty of art galleries, studios, and startups. Starting in the spring of 2021, it is also going to be home to Recompose, a new company that has a rather interesting mission associated with death care:

“Recompose offers an alternative choice to cremation and conventional burial methods. Our service – recomposition – gently converts human remains into soil, so that we can nourish new life after we die.”

We live in a world that often considers alternatives for environmental protection. This is also coming to burial and cremation, thanks to Recompose. They will put bodies in a vessel filled with alfalfa, straw and wood chips. It takes about 30 days for the body to be reduced to compost, and the family can use it to re-forest land in Washington. They can also grow their own memory garden.

This process does more than take care of the earth, it takes approximately 1/8 of the energy necessary for cremation. Recompose is part of the green death movement, helping to build up urban landscapes where a lack of forests makes it difficult for green burials. The cost for this process should be around $5500.

A look inside of the facility shows that it is quite beautiful. The large open space was designed by Olson Kundig Architects and the 18,500 ft.² area has plenty of light. Greenery and meeting space for funerals is also available. In this space are also 75 hexagon pods where the bodies go. It looks somewhat like a beehive.

Katrina Spade, the founder of the company gave a TED Talk on the field of environmentally friendly death care.