AudioFiles - Episode 6 (Season Finale)

December 7th, 2022

Reported two-way with clips

Listen to the full episode at: www.audiofilespodcast.com

AudioFiles host Liz Short (left) and guest reporter Rachael Robertson (right) recording live in studio. // Photo credit: Paige Perez

HOST, LIZ SHORT:

 Our preferences for end of life planning are often deeply personal choices shaped by our cultures and values. Some people have specific wishes that their ashes be spread in their favorite place, while others want to be buried in their family cemetery plot. Soon New Yorkers might have a new option for end of life care, having their body composted and turned into soil.

A bill legalizing human composting and setting regulations similar to cremation is sitting on Governor Hochul's desk. Reporter Rachael Robertson is a master’s student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and a freelance reporter. She's been covering human composting for the past few months and is in the studio with us.

Hi, Rachael.

RACHAEL ROBERTSON:

Hi Liz. Thanks for having me.

HOST:

Of course. Thank you for coming on. So first things first, what exactly is human composting?

RR:

So the technical name for human composting is Natural Organic Reduction, or NOR. Basically, it's a process that expedites how any living organism already decomposes with the perfect ratio of alfalfa, wood chips and oxygen so that microorganisms thrive. After just over a month, your loved one turns into about 250 pounds of nutrient rich compost that's totally safe to use in your garden or landscaping—wherever you want. It also decomposes teeth and bones, which is unlike any other method.

HOST:

That is impressive. Where exactly did the idea for human composting come from?

RR:

Societies have been burying their dead and letting nature take its course since the start of time. In fact, we still do that. While a lot of people choose to be cremated or embalmed, natural burial is also really popular. Some religions, like Judaism, do natural burials as part of their end of life rituals. Other people like it for environmental reasons. But natural burial takes up a lot of space. You still need land to be buried in! And cities don't have a ton of cemetery space for any kind of burial.

So about a decade ago, an architect in Massachusetts named Katrina Spade was thinking about this conundrum when a friend told her that farmers compost the bodies of dead livestock over a period of years. She wondered why not people too? I spoke with Katrina on Zoom from her office in Seattle. She told me when she was first talking to people about it, reactions were mixed.

CLIP: Katrina Spade

Well, first of all, when people have the ‘ick’ reaction, which is definitely something I've seen, I kind of invite them to think pretty deeply about cremation and conventional burial with embalming and a casket and everything like that, if they want to. Because I think that the ‘ick’ reaction is often to the idea of a dead body doing anything than it is to composting specifically.

RR:

What Katrina realized was: this idea is really possible and a great idea for cities that don't have enough space to bury people.

HOST:

Exactly, and so first, Katrina has this big idea to see if composting works for humans, but she's an architect. How did she figure out how to actually physically complete this process?

RR:

After she had the idea, Katrina decided to run with it. She had to collaborate with a lot of people. So in 2014, she started connecting with soil scientists and engineers and funeral directors to figure out how to make human composting work for real. A year later, they successfully composted their first person who donated their body to the process.

HOST:

Wow, that actually sounds really beautiful and sounds like a lot of years of work.

RR:

Totally. Totally. And then the next big task though, was getting legislators to buy into the idea.

HOST:

Right, right.

RR:

When Katrina first started developing NOR, human composting wasn't legal anywhere in the US yet. So Katrina introduced the idea to legislators. She brought them compost that was once a person's body. She let them hold it and smell it, easing their worries that human composting was somehow gross or gruesome.

In 2019, Washington became the first state to legalize human composting. A year later, Katrina opened Recompose: the first human composting facility in the US. It's in Seattle where she's based, and it's been operational for two years now.

HOST:

Wow. So, is human composting going to become an option for New Yorkers?

RR:

So far a bill legalizing human composting in New York has already passed the New York State Senate and Assembly. It's on Governor Hochul's desk now, which is the final step.

I spoke with the New York State Senator who sponsored the bill—Leroy Comrie. He represents Queens. He told me that he thinks Governor Hochul is going to sign it soon, especially now that she's been reelected. It's a really popular bill with only a few critics, mostly from the New York State Catholic Conference, which believes that composting people doesn't meet their religious standard for funeral care. They're urging Hochul to veto the bill.

But on the other hand, lots of people are encouraging Hochul to sign it. That includes a green funeral thought leader who's based in California named Caitlin Doughty, who just had an opinion piece in the New York Times this week. She wrote about how close New York is to legalizing human composting.

Even if the bill passes, it's going to take time to set up human composting facilities, which will all have to be in non-profit cemeteries, which is different than in other states.

HOST:

Yeah. Is human composting really a thing that people want?

RR:

Based on my reporting, NOR is gaining traction, but it's also still under the radar since it's so new.

But the people who are on board are on board. Take Howard Fischer for example. Howard lives here in New York, but he's already signed up to be composted at Recompose in Seattle when he dies, which is Katrina's company. He's only 63. Howard's an investor in companies he thinks are going to fight climate change, and that's part of why he invested in Recompose and why he's already paid to be composted there in the future.

He's written letters to Hochul as well. Here's what Howard told me about how his family reacted when he told them about his post-death plans.

CLIP: Howard Fischer

They know me. They know that I, you know, that I'm on this journey and path. I get enthusiastic and I'm doing the things that I want to do, and that the environment is a very, very important, um, mission. Protecting the climate reverse and climate change are very important to me. So there was no, no one said no, No one said, ‘that's crazy.’ No one said, ‘that's stupid.’—None of that.

RR:

Not everybody is as passionate about it as Howard, but it's definitely growing in popularity. Katrina has noticed this too.Here's how she explained this trend:

Basically, there hasn't been a new option for death care in a really long time, especially not a new option that's environmentally friendly.

CLIP: Katrina Spade

For many Americans they don’t have a family plot and they're not as interested anymore in conventional burial, and so cremation is kind of the default. It’s cheaper, it’s perceived to be more environmentally friendly, though it isn’t actually, which is an important distinction. So then when folks hear about this option, many people are intrigued.

The data backs this up too. A recent survey from the New York State Funeral Directors Association found that 60% of people are interested in having a green funeral when they die.

HOST:

Oh, that's quite a bit. And this does sound very complicated at a lot of levels. Basically, is human composting actually possible here in New York City?

RR:

That's a good question. There are definitely a lot of logistical questions and structural challenges to getting this done. Right now, the legislation stipulates that the soil can't be spread the same way ashes can, which begs the question, what do you do with 250 pounds of soil that used to be your loved one?

In Seattle, the compost that families don't take home with them is donated to a forest to help maintain the land, which could be a template for New York. But despite these hurdles, New York City especially is a place where people could really benefit from a green death care option like NOR. We have limited cemetery space and honestly limited green space in general.

Katrina told me that when she was designing Recompose, she thought of New York as the kind of place that could really benefit from NOR.

CLIP: Katrina Spade

It was meant to be in NYC because it’s always meant to be about the densest urban spaces and how it’s really hard to connect back to nature after you’ve died. But so I think if we could be in New York one day it would be beautiful for a full circle because it actually started there.

RR:

If this bill passes, we're gonna see pretty soon how many New Yorkers really want this death care option.

HOST:

Exactly, and thank you so much for bringing us the story, Rachael.

RR:

Thanks so much, Liz.

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Total run time: 08:42