Would you like to be composted?

My friend Dan once composted a dead sheep on his compost heap. He was impressed with the results and said that there was virtually no sign of it when he later emptied it out onto the garden. As he sadly approaches the latter years of his own life, he often says that he wishes it was legal for his own body to be thrown on the compost heap.

I wish that too. Anyone who knows me well, will know that I'm a big fan of composting. Vineeta and I have a composting toilet in our house and have harvested over two tonnes of humanure. That’s a lot of great top soil! I can say from experience that if you want to understand the circular economy, there are few better ways to learn than by composting your own poo and growing your dinner in it. In just the same way that facing your own shit helps you deal with one reality, I think the idea of being composted at end of life can help us face one of life’s hardest realities.

So it seems strange to me that people don’t get composted when they die. Somehow it just makes sense that we would merge back into nature as seamlessly as we emerged from it. Yet nearly everyone in the western world is either cremated or buried in a coffin. Surely that has to change.

A few years ago, I almost jumped out of my seat with excitement when I stumbled upon an interview somewhere with Katrina Spade, the founder of a company called Recompose who are doing exactly that. Recompose is apparently the world's first composting funeral business.

While the idea of composting bodies might sound easy, starting a business in this field has been far harder than Dan just chucking his sheep on top of the garden compost heap. Katrina has spent the last 10 years of her life developing a safe, efficient human composting technology and campaigning for its legalisation. So far, five US states have now legalised composting of human bodies.

To me, this seems like a truly wonderful thing. Just on a symbolic level, it feels right that we should be allowed to have our bodies returned to nature in the way that nature intended. I think its what a lot of people would want.

The Recompose term in front of a bank of composting pods, with founder Katrina Spade bottom right.

The benefits for the environment are surprisingly big too. According to Recompose, human burials in the United States alone use 4 million acres of hardwood forest per year, 1.6 million tonnes of concrete and 7 million gallons of embalming fluid, not to mention the growing shortage of burial space. Cremation is actually more popular these days but uses fossil fuels to power the furnaces and releases toxins into the air.

A body composted avoids all of this destruction, saves about a tonne of CO2 and returns the bodies valuable nutrients to nature. It takes just two months under controlled conditions, and then the compost is returned to the family to distribute in a place of their choice. I think this is one of the best examples of sustainable business that I have ever come across.

I hope that Recompose can succeed in disrupting the global funeral industry and making composting the standard choice for most of us by the time that sad day comes. In order to help it along, I’ve made a small investment in Recompose on WeFunder and if you’re interested, the funding round has been extended for a few more days.

We need more businesses like Recompose and more people like Katrina Spade who have the vision and determination to make them happen. A business like this doesn't transform the world overnight, but perhaps by the time I reach the end of my life, it will have done.