The World's First Human Composting Facility Will Open in 2021

When a human being's time is up, in Western countries we generally have two main options for our mortal remains - burial or cremation. Now, a world-first facility has been set up to offer a unique alternative ritual to traditional choices: compost. Recompose, which is scheduled to begin operations in Seattle, Washington in 2021, bills itself as the world's first human composting facility, offering to gently convert human remains into soil, in a process it calls "recomposition" or "natural organic reduction". The company, a public benefit corporation led by founder Katrina Spade, has been in the works for years, but became a legally viable service this year when Washington passed a historic bill to become the first US state to allow human composting. The law goes into effect in May 2020, enabling what Spade calls a "death-care revolution", in which bodies of the deceased will transform into soil in the company's reusable, hexagonal 'Recomposition Vessels'.