Startups race to get a foothold in a burgeoning industry as New York and California legalize human composting
Sunday 19 February 2023 at 11:00 GMT
Americans are looking for greener ways to die, and a new wave of death care startups are jumping on the opportunity.
After death, corpses are usually treated in one of two ways: embalmed and buried in a coffin, or cremated and reduced to ashes. But both of those options have contributed to the environmental crisis — with fossil-fuel-intensive cremation that releases chemicals like carbon monoxide into the air, and burial that takes up vast tracts of land.
As interest in alternatives increases, startups aiming to disrupt these practices are gaining momentum. New York in January became the sixth U.S. state to legalize human composting, also known as “natural organic reduction,” which uses heat and oxygen to speed up the microbial process that turns bodies into soil.
Demand growth is partly due to Covid-19, experts say. The pandemic pushed death to the forefront of public awareness and raised concerns about its environmental devastation, as places like Los Angeles had to suspend air pollution regulations to accommodate an influx of corpses.
Human composters are posing as part of the solution — and in the process trying to dismantle the funeral industry. The potential to change an age-old practice has brought together ex-Silicon Valley guys, celebrity investors and mission-driven entrepreneurs as interested in lofty green goals as they are in transforming our relationship with death.
Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose, poses with a cloaked mannequin in front of a row of human composting bins in Seattle. Photo Credit: Mat Hayward/Getty Images for Recompose
Vendors say they are seeing unprecedented demand. Human composting start-up Return Home has seen 20 people from California, where human composting is not yet legal, transporting their loved ones to the company’s facilities in Washington state – including five who were driving with bodies in tow.
“The fact that we’re now seeing so many Californians flock to Return Home to pre-purchase services for themselves and their loved ones is positive evidence of that [our technology] is the future of funeral services”, SAid Micah Truman, CEO and Founder of the Company.
Founders paint a picture of an industry that is both collegial and competitive, where entrepreneurs meet at meetings and through group chats, but often look over their shoulders at people entering the industry with less altruistic views. That’s especially true as the funeral industry’s old guardians try to cash in on the new trend, Truman said.
“It’s interesting because in order to create disruption, we have to involve outsiders,” he said. “Because everyone in the funeral industry is investing so heavily in existing technology, you need outsiders to help think outside the box – no pun intended.”
An industry that is about to explode
Natural organic reduction is a relatively new process that’s pioneered across the industry by a woman named Katrina Spade. In her 2013 thesis, Spade examined methods that farmers had used to compost animals and found that they could be applied to human bodies. Placing remains in a container with natural materials such as straw and wood shavings can speed up the microbial process that turns bodies into soil. Composting a human currently takes eight to 12 weeks and is estimated to use only one-eighth the energy required for cremation.
In the years that followed, Spade worked with lobbyists, lawmakers, and investors to legalize natural bioreduction in Washington in 2019. As of December 2020, her company, Recompose, had made them available to consumers for $7,000—equivalent to the median cost of a cremation at $6,971 and the median cost of a burial-with-burial at $7,848, excluding the cost of the cemetery lot, which is several thousand can be dollars.
At least three companies have sprung up in Washington alone in recent years, some raising millions from venture capital firms. And as more states catch up, entrepreneurs say the industry is more vibrant than ever.
At least six states have legalized the process so far, and California, the most populous US state, will allow human composting in 2027 after a law passed last year went into effect, opening up the potential for millions of new customers.
“In Washington, where human composting has been legal for some time, the industry is concentrated and extremely competitive,” Truman said. “But I’m sure everyone will be doing push-ups and getting ready to go to California once it opens.”
Micah Truman displays a Return Home demonstration ship decorated with flowers and family photos for the deceased in Auburn, Washington. Photo: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images Truman holds a sample bag of composted animal waste. Photo: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images
The commercialization of alternative death care is already creating tension in an industry built on a strained product. It’s difficult to get people to talk about death, let alone invest in it. According to Caitlin Doughty, undertaker and author of several books about death and the funeral industry, this has led death care entrepreneurs and advocates of a greener approach to death to balance altruistic goals with the demands of startup culture.
“There’s a recent discrepancy that’s emerging between the core idea of the ritual centered around death in human composting and a bizarre attraction to Silicon Valley,” she said. “This is a fascinating development.”
With a traditional $20 billion funeral market, it’s no surprise that emerging technologies have caught the interest of tech investors. A 2019 Funeral Directors Association poll found nearly 52% of Americans expressed interest in green funeral options, and experts estimated the burgeoning market opened up by legalization efforts in Massachusetts, Illinois, California and New York is creating a market could be worth in the $1 billion range.
There is also a growing market in Gen Z and Millennials, dubbed the “death-positive” generation — who are more willing to discuss afterlife plans and explore green alternatives at a younger age. Startups are taking on the situation with social media reach: Return Home has more than 617,000 followers on TikTok, where its employees answer questions like “What happens to prosthetic hips in the human composting process?” and “What does it smell like during the process?”
Human composting is not the only alternative euthanasia option attracting increasing interest. Others include aquamation, a legal procedure in 28 states that transforms the body into a liquid. Outdoor burial, in which bodies are buried without embalming or a coffin and are allowed to naturally decompose over time, is legal in almost all states, but laws vary as to where the body can be buried.
Darren Aronofsky is one of the most prominent supporters of human composting startups. Photo: Scott Kirkland/Rex/Shutterstock
But of all the alternative options, human composting seems to have gotten the most attention, Doughty said.
“I see the composting space as uniquely competitive in a way I’ve never seen before [other processes] like aquamation or even cremation,” she said. “It appears uniquely positioned at a crossroads of climate change policies and new technologies that speaks to the Silicon Valley ethos.”
A focus on ethics
The environmental benefits of alternative death care have become a big selling point for companies as the green investment trend picks up. Transcend, a New York-based green burial startup that promises to turn human bodies into trees after death, highlights its goal of mass afforestation and green burial in its advertising, stating on its website: “Every tree burial creates a healthier foundation for all life on earth.”
Founder and CEO Matthew Kochmann hails from Silicon Valley and counts himself among the first employees of Uber. He got into the euthanasia industry after thinking about the spiritual nature of funeral options, he says.
“I’ve been thinking about how I would personally like to become a tree after death, and I realized there weren’t any ways to do that — I’d have to do it myself,” he said. “I’m a big advocate of healing humanity’s relationship and fear of mortality.”
Through Transcend’s process, the body is buried in biodegradable linen along with a unique blend of fungus-infused soil, and a young tree is planted in the soil above. The company says the mushrooms then “work their magic” to “ensure a direct connection between the nutrient-rich body and the tree’s root system, allowing the body to literally become the tree.”
A Recompose cradle in Seattle. Photo: Sabel Roizen/@belroiz No sale or distribution without permission.
The company has attracted interest from investors and celebrities, with Darren Aronofsky, director of Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, counting himself among the company’s advisors. Still, fundraising hasn’t always been easy, Kochmann said, adding that some investors have told him, “We don’t invest in taboo areas like pornography or death.”
“Equating death with pornography just goes to show that there is still a lot of work to be done in our culture and in our society to make people more comfortable with it,” he said.
Recompose, the original human composting start-up, has raised nearly $18 million — none of which, as the founder is quick to point out, came from traditional venture capital funds, but from accredited “value-based investors,” Spade said — investors who ” investing primarily for Recompose’s mission and vision.
Spade said the company has prioritized fundraising models that allow it to stay true to its advocacy roots while creating sustainable funding. It has also set up a “community fund” to subsidize its services for customers who cannot afford to pay full price.
The company has worked directly with lawmakers to pass legislation that allows human composting while creating a framework that supports strong ethics in the burgeoning industry.
“We want to be sure that any human composter working with bereaved families is doing so within the framework of the most ethical practices,” she said. “It’s not just about how we dissect, operate and serve our customers – but how can we support an industry that always has the most ethical and rigorous operations?”
Spade said that although her company was the first to pioneer human composting, she is “thrilled” to see the movement grow. And though the new frontier of death care is becoming busier in some places, those involved say there is an environment of camaraderie and support as they work towards a common goal: breaking the monopoly that the traditional funeral industry has on death.
“This is a community that has to rely on solidarity,” said Kochmann. “You fight for laws, you fight for regulation fights and you fight a tough consumer fight because people don’t want to think about death.”
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