Composting bodies catches on as the eco-friendly alternative to burial and cremation

Last week was a difficult milestone for Sean Hanna of Encino.

It marked one year since he lost his partner Stephen Staunton to brain cancer. Staunton was an avid gardener. He was also a really big fan of eating mushrooms.

“He had heard something about your body being transformed into mushrooms, and his favorite food was mushrooms. And he just thought that might be a really cool idea, if he became a mushroom,” Hanna laughed.

So when Staunton died, Hanna set out to make that dream a reality. That’s how he stumbled upon a burgeoning industry that offers “terramation.” 

Just like cremation is a more comfortable word for body incineration, terramation is a delicate phrase that basically just means the composting of human remains. The big selling point: It’s a natural process that creates almost no pollution.

Hanna chose to do that through a company called Earth Funeral. Its co-founder and CEO Tom Harries said it’s a simple, four-step process:

• “Step one is gently washing your body and wrapping it in a biodegradable shroud.” 
• “Step two is placing the body on a bed of organic mulch, wood chip and wildflower.” 
• “Step three is optimizing temperature, moisture and oxygen levels that creates the perfect conditions for microbes to break the body down.”
• “And step four is you’re left with nutrient rich soil.”

The process is very similar to a backyard compost pile. It needs the right combination of carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich organic material to work. It needs periodic turning or “agitation.” Just like any composting process, materials get added and nothing is burned, so the final product is actually larger than the body itself: 200-300 pounds of soil.

Harries said most families choose to keep a small portion of that soil, and then most of it gets sent to fertilize conservation land that the company has either purchased or partnered with.

Earth Funeral services cost roughly $5,000, which is comparable to an average cremation and cheaper than even a no-frills traditional burial in a simple casket.

The environmental argument for this is that the process creates almost no pollution. Meanwhile, the most common forms of body disposition in the United States have a significant climate impact.

“The traditional funeral industry as it exists right now in the U.S. is really resource-heavy,” said Brie Smith of Return Home, another terramation funeral home. “We have casket production, we have obviously the vault for the outside of the casket.”

The vault is a resource-intensive concrete and rebar casing that rests beneath the thirsty cemetery lawns of the drought-striken southwest. Even so-called green burials frequently include the vaults and the thirsty lawns.

About 35% of people in the U.S. choose traditional burial. Roughly 60% choose cremation, and that’s been going up. Cremation has a fraction of the environmental impact, but it’s still as pollutive as driving a gas-powered car several hundred miles.

“It’s just a bunch of propane and high volumes of, you know, carbon releasing into the atmosphere,” Smith said.

Earth Funeral recently opened a facility in Las Vegas to serve the southwest. It opened after Staunton died. His partner Hanna sent his body to Washington state. The soil that he became fertilized trees in the Olympic peninsula.

A small portion of Staunton’s soil returned to his family. His brother spread his portion on a campground they visited when they were kids; his mom used her soil to fertilize her vegetable garden in Maine; and Hanna spread his over the plants that they potted together just before he died.

When his time comes, Hanna has options closer to home. But that doesn’t matter. He wants to be in Washington state too.

“That was one of my favorite rainforests, the Olympic National Forest,” he said. “I’d want to be where he is.”