Human Composting: A New Take on the ‘Green’ Funeral

“It’s one really nice way to give back to the planet, but it’s practical as well,” says Harries, who plans to be composted when he dies. Comparing the process to cremation, he adds: “The idea of being gently transformed into soil and returned to nature seemed way more appealing than being cremated at 1,500 degrees.”

Recompose, a human composting company based in Seattle, Washington, partners with nonprofit organizations to protect and regenerate ecosystems through conservation, rewilding, and other restoration practices.

Consider concerns

Not all states have jumped on board the human-composting bandwagon. Even those who have are navigating new territory as they develop suitable standards and regulations to ensure safe and environmentally sound practices.

On the regulation front, Harries says facilities such as Earth Funeral are licensed and regulated by state agencies. Earth Funeral also undergoes an annual inspection.

There are religious concerns for some. The Catholic Church opposes the option; in a March 23, 2023, statement, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Doctrine said that after evaluating human composting, it concluded that the process failed “to satisfy the Church's requirements for proper respect for the bodies of the dead.”

And there’s a lack of research on the process — though proponents such as Return Home, a human composting facility based in Seattle, Washington, argue that the more legalization there is, the more information researchers will have to conduct extensive studies.

“The more data we have, the better,” says Return Home CEO Micah Truman. “That said, we had to complete a full lab analysis of our soil for the first 80 cases. All passed, and we have detailed reporting for all of it.”

Founded in January 2019 and open to the public since June 2021, Return Home worked with approximately 60 families in its first full year of operation, and projects working with between 350 and 400 families in 2025.

Understand costs

Human composting can be more affordable than a traditional burial or cremation.

The National Funeral Directors Association puts the national median cost of a funeral with a viewing and burial at $8,300, and the median cost of a funeral with cremation at $6,280.

Earth Funeral and Return Home charge around $5,000, not counting travel expenses should a body need to be moved from another state where the process is not yet legal. (Bodies are packed in dry ice and transported via plane.)

Have conversations about your end-of-life wishes

While you may have decided human composting is the right choice for you, it’s imperative to make sure loved ones are aware of your final wishes, says Camelia L. Clarke, spokesperson for the National Funeral Directors Association and a licensed funeral director based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“This will help them to have a healthy grief journey,” Clarke says. “If you haven’t prepared them, they may have the burden of [not being able to honor] mom or dad’s wishes because of a regulatory issue.”

Tim Andruss agrees. The 64-year-old became an Earth Funeral customer after his wife, Alenka, passed away in October 2023. They’d been together 38 years.

“It is a new-enough option that it could leave some people flummoxed, and it’s not something that one would want to be explaining under the duress of the loss,” says Andruss, who lives in Olympia, Washington. “Personally, I've found that the people who gain an understanding of organic reduction versus more traditional Western methods of caring for the passed have come to embrace the concept, and have often begun similar planning themselves.”

Alenka Andruss on her birthday with her new "gardening wagon."

Courtesy Tim Andruss

Embrace the sentimentality

Andruss and his wife were avid gardeners, so Andruss is using his wife’s soil to create a backyard perennial garden in her memory to be filled with purple flowers — her favorite color. He has given away some soil to his wife’s daughter, spread some in overseas locales that were meaningful to the couple, and donated the rest to conservation projects.

“Alenka’s soil is so alive,” says Andruss, who plans to be composted when he dies. Comparing the process to cremation, he continues, “Ash just feels like ‘Here are some remains,’ and the soil feels like there’s life to it, because there is.”

Return Home customer Roberta Vollendorff, 73, buried all 240 pounds of soil from her son Sean’s terramation beneath the gigantic sitka spruce tree on her farm, where she raised her family. Sean, a highly decorated Special Weapons and Tactics officer for the Takoma Police Department, died by suicide.

The tree where Roberta Vollendorff spread composted soil from her son Sean’s terramation.

Courtesy Roberta Vollendorff

It was “our laughing tree, our crying tree, our hiding tree, our everything tree,” says Vollendorff, a retired special education teacher from Bellingham, Washington. “To me, the magic was having my son under the tree he grew up with…. I wasn’t losing him. I was having him be with me.”

Even the transformation process can offer some sense of connection.

Truman recalls seeing a woman during Return Home’s public visiting hours with her back up against a vessel, her eyes closed. The woman later said she could feel the heat of her mother against her back.

“There are intensely beautiful things about this,” Truman says.