People in New York are trying to figure out what to do with their corpses after they die. The process of natural organic reduction, also known as human composting, is now legal in New York State.
Composting over alternative end-of-life methods is a good choice. A lot of nasty stuff is used in burial. Over five million gallons of chemicals are buried with dead bodies each year. 360,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide is generated annually from the burning of the bodies in the US.
Natural organic reduction works by curing a human corpse with wood chips in a special container and then breaking it down into mulch. The family of the dead can use the soil from the body in gardens or scatter it outside. The process could save a ton of CO2 per person.
In the last few years, the movement around human composting in the U.S. has picked up steam. Washington was the first state to legalized the process in 2019. California and Vermont are the only two states that have legalized human composting, and New York is the third. The bill to legalize the process in New York never made it to a vote, but it did make it through the house and senate.
The first organization to license human composting in the U.S. was a Seattle based organization called Recompose, which was founded by the inventor of the natural organic reduction process.
A lot of land and fossil fuels are used for cremation and burial. It's pretty significant for a lot of people to be turned into soil that can be turned into a garden or tree.
Some people are against the new method. The New York State Catholic Conference told Catholics to contact Hochul to oppose the bill.
Dennis Poust, the group's executive director, said in a statement thatComposting is something we as a society associate with a sustainable method of eliminating organic trash. The process doesn't meet the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains and the bishops don't believe it.
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