How an NC professor and her students helped human composting become legal in the US
For Wake Forest University Law School professor Tanya Marsh, it feels a little ironic that a company that turns human remains into compost is working to open a facility in North Carolina.
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After all, the state played a major role in getting human composting up and running legally around the country, thanks to Wake Forest University helping the inventor. Human composting uses natural processes to turn a person’s remains into soil over a period of more than a month.
“The ironic thing is, the legal work started in North Carolina. But to my knowledge, nobody’s even introduced legislation to try and make it legal in North Carolina yet,” said Marsh, a senior associate dean and professor of funeral and cemetery law at Wake Forest University School of Law.
That’s what a company called Earth Funeral is trying to do.
The San Francisco- and New York-based business is working toward that goal, and said it would spend an estimated $10 million to set up a facility in the state, possibly in Charlotte. The company operates facilities in Washington, Nevada, and Maryland. It serves families nationwide, despite having only a few facilities in the country.
Earth Funeral is licensed to operate as a funeral establishment in North Carolina, and It transports residents’ remains to states where human composting is legal. This increases costs for families, so building an in-state facility would save families money on transportation.
The idea of organized human composting is a little over a dozen years old.
In 2014, Katrina Spade launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the Urban Death Project, a nonprofit pushing for ecological death care. It was connected to Spade’s master’s thesis for the University of Massachusetts Amherst, proposing human composting and land restoration.
Spade created the concept after recognizing a lack of eco-friendly end-of-life choices while pondering her own death.
“When I started thinking about my own future death, I quickly realized that I didn’t want to be cremated, and I didn’t want to be buried in a cemetery either,” Spade said in an interview with The Charlotte Observer. “And I was surprised that there really weren’t many other options.”
Marsh saw what she was doing and reached out to let Spade know that her proposal was illegal in the U.S.
“I sent her an email and I said, ‘Interesting idea, but this is super illegal,’ ” Marsh said. “‘If you are serious about this, I’d be happy to have my cemetery law class investigate what laws these practices would violate and what changes would be needed in the law to sort of fix that.’”
For several years, students in Marsh’s funeral and cemetery law course drafted legal memorandums for every state. The class is the only course dedicated exclusively to funeral and cemetery law in a U.S. law school, and Marsh has taught it for 14 years.
Spade used the research provided by Marsh and her students as the legal foundation to pass laws in Washington State in 2019, where she opened Recompose, the first human composting funeral home.
Recompose partnered with Washington State University in 2018 for a pilot study to show human composting is safe for public health and the environment. It used decades of existing research on livestock composting.
Earth Funeral’s human composting process transforms bodies into nutrient-rich soil in 30 to 45 days. The process involves placing the body in a tube-shaped, high-tech vessel filled with organic mulch, wood chips, and wildflowers.
Naturally occurring microbes break down the body at the molecular level. Once the process is complete, Earth Funeral gives families compost that resembles potting soil. Families can use it to grow small plants, create memorial gardens or plant trees.
Any compost families don’t keep is donated to land conservation and reforestation projects, where it helps support the planting of native trees.
Earth Funeral charges about $6,500, which is cheaper than the national average for a full-service funeral at $9,500, according to the company. Cremations are around the same price as human composting.
The process is an alternative to traditional burial or cremation, the latter of which is chosen by 57% of North Carolina residents, according to Earth Funeral.
Marsh conducts an annual national survey on consumer preferences in death care. Her research found that one-third of respondents would consider human composting, while 6% said it was their preferred option, suggesting public interest.
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Today, 60% of deaths result in cremation, according to Marsh’s research.
“Forty years ago, it was still less than 10%,” she added. “It took a long time for cremation to be adopted as a method, even though it’s been around for a long time. To see states legalize composting this quickly is just really amazing.”
And Spade has no plans of slowing down with Recompose. It serves clients nationwide with roughly 40% of bodies being shipped to the Seattle facility from out of state.
Recompose is planning to expand to the East Coast. Spade expressed an openness with North Carolina being an option.
Human composting is legal in more than a dozen states now. Earth Funeral’s effort to expand into North Carolina would strengthen its presence in the Southeast.
Last year, Georgia became the first southern state to legalize the process.
Even if the N.C. Legislature approves a bill and the governor signs it into law, the process would not begin immediately. California legalized human composting in 2022, but its law will not take effect until 2027. The delay gives state environmental, zoning and cemetery officials time to develop regulations for the practice.
Spade believes most states in the U.S. will eventually legalize human composting.
“It’s just a matter of when,” she said.
Human composting has faced pushback from some religious groups.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has opposed bills that would legalize human composting, saying it does not show proper respect for the bodies of the dead. The bishops argue that scattering the compost or using it for land restoration fails to provide the body with a final resting place.
Spade disagreed, and said each person should be able to decide what is respectful for their own body after death.
“The reason I like the process is that it acknowledges we humans are part of the natural world,” Spade said. “We came from stardust, and we can return to soil and stardust again.”
Marsh doesn’t see any reason the law should prevent people from choosing a method of disposition that aligns with their religious beliefs and feels meaningful to them and their families.
“I don’t know why legislatures would stand in the way of people getting what they want in that area of life.”
The North Carolina Funeral Directors Association takes no official stance against human composting, according to President Jeff Walker. The main role of funeral service providers is to help families honor their loved ones as they see fit for closure, regardless of the method, he said.
Walker prefers the traditional method of using a casket for burial, but said personal preference should not dictate choices for others.
“I’m all for whatever (families) want to do because this is the business that we’re in,” Walker said. “It’s honoring their loved ones in the way they see fit.”
“It’s not something that I would do myself. But that’s just because I’ve just been raised traditionally,” Walker said. “We’re always buried in a casket in a cemetery, but I can understand people that want to do something like this.”
There is no lobbying effort against it from the NCFDA. He believes it’s only a matter of time before it becomes standard and legally established in the state.
“I’m sure it’s coming because it’s been approved in several other states,” he said, including in Georgia.
Marsh has first-hand experience with what’s possible.
“When people have an opportunity to think about it and understand that it’s a deeply reverent practice,” she said, “and not about throwing a body into a backyard compost heap, I think it will have a broader appeal.”
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