● Virginia : HJ-513, to legalize human composting, was introduced to the Virginia House of Representatives in January 2023. ● New Mexico : SB-0407, to legalize human composting, was introduced to the New Mexico Senate in February 2023. ● Illinois : HB3158 to legalize human composting was introduced in the Illinois House of Representatives in February 2023. ● Rhode Island : H7212 is being considered by the Rhode Island House of Representatives. Having developed commercially available human composting after years of intense design and research, Recompose (n.d.) outlines the steps taken for the natural organic reduction process to honor the recently deceased. Soon after their death, a person comes into the natural organic reduction provider’s care under respectfully personalized care in preparation for the person to transform into soil. Families can visit their departed loved one at a provider for a laying-in ceremony, adding items like straw, alfalfa, and wood chips, before the deceased’s vessel gets closed so the transformation can begin. From then on the body stays in the vessel and plant matter for as little as five and as many as seven weeks, allowing the nutrient-dense soil to form. The provider then cures the soil for another three to five weeks before ending up with roughly one cubic yard of plantable soil per body. As this option with the greatest environmental benefit proves, no method of disposition comes without pluses or minuses. Natural organic reduction, while the seeming solution to unwanted environmental aftereffects of burials and cremations, also takes considerable time and care before involvement with families and their deceased loved one ceases. For those seeking immediate grief for the loss of a mere acquaintance or nuisance, human composting may be more long and drawn out than the survivor seeks to grieve. For anyone who wants to healthfully and fully process and purge grief-stricken emotions over a loved one who had no greater wish than to return to nature upon death, terramation is the best fit. Alkaline hydrolysis works wonderfully to save carbon emissions produced by retorts, yet not so well for a someone wishing to conserve water. Embalming puts a temporary halt to decomposition to restore color with dyes and lifelike rigidity through the capillary’s reaction to the formaldehyde in embalming fluid. According to Recompose (n.d.), traditional burial practices not only introduce embalming chemicals into soil over time but also require substantial resources. The organization reports that the United States annually buries approximately 30 million board-feet of hardwood, 90,000 tons of steel, and 1.6 million tons of concrete—materials used in caskets and vaults designed to separate bodies from the earth rather than return them to it. Green funeral alternatives eliminate these resource-intensive materials, potentially preserving and enriching soil quality at a time when land values continue to rise significantly. More alternatives exist for green funerals beyond these main three. Recompose (n.d.) recollects how actor Luke Perry put mushroom burial suits back in the news. Mushroom fungi help break down the body, neutralize toxins, and enliven surrounding soil, yet some contest the fungi does not get all it needs when fully submerged within the earth.
Unfortunately, according to Green Burial Council (n.d.), promession pioneer Promessa “liquidated in 2015 due to an inability to build a functioning facility or prove viability.” This left studies of promession, and thus developing firms and facilities who could offer it, frozen. Finally and fortunately, one green funeral method quite recently caught momentum in its popularity and increasingly moves toward or into legislation across North America: natural organic reduction (NOR). Conversely to how embalming slows down decomposition, natural organic reduction actually speeds it up in an effort to convert human remains into arable compost more rapidly than natural decay would yield. Natural organic reduction, which Recompose (n.d.) pioneered and implemented upon its home state of Washington’s introduction and legalization of NOR in 2019, utilizes and accelerates decompositional microbes to aid in the dead human body’s conversion to soil. Also called recomposition , human composting, or terramation, the NOR process includes the introduction of alfalfa, sawdust, and other highly biodegradable materials to human remains, minimizing the decomposition journey to plantable soil in as swiftly as one month. Since making natural organic reduction legal in 2019, the National Funeral Directors Association (2025) includes Washington in its rapidly growing list of 13 United States where natural organic reduction passed legislation. Some U.S. legislation recently legalized natural organic reduction, namely in Georgia on May 1, 2025, and in Minnesota on July 1, 2025. Phaneuf (2025) lists the following United States with legalized natural organic reduction as of May 2025, as well as effective dates where they differ from dates legalized: ● Washington (effective May 2020) ● Colorado (August 2021) ● Oregon (January 2022) ● Vermont (January 2023) ● California (approved in 2022; effective in 2027) Others span years between when the laws permitting natural organic reduction passed and when they allow it to take place, with California as the example of greatest duration legalizing composting human remains in 2022, yet waiting until 2027 for human composting to become legally permitted there. The National Funeral Directors Association (2025) names another few United States in line to legalize natural organic reductions, with various bills introduced from 2021 through 2024 that are still undergoing legislative discussion: ● Hawaii : HB-680 to legalize human composting was introduced to the state legislature in January 2021. ● Pennsylvania : HB-2916 to legalize human composting was introduced to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in October 2022. ● Massachusetts : As of January 2023, Rep. Jack Lewis and Rep. Natalie Higgins are leading legislation to legalize human composting in Massachusetts. ● Connecticut : HB-06485 to legalize human composting was introduced in the Connecticut General Assembly in January 2023. ● New York (August 2024) ● Nevada (January 2024) ● Arizona (approved in April 2024) ● Delaware (May 2024) ● Maryland (October 2024) ● Minnesota (effective July 2025) ● Maine (August 2024) ● Georgia (effective May 2025)
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