“Recomposition”: Composting Meets the Death Industry

February 5, 2019

February 5, 2019


Here in NERC’s hometown of Brattleboro, Vermont, the local waste hauler collects household food scraps once a week, and delivers them for rendering into compost at our solid waste management district. It’s a trend that’s catching on in many places, and for many reasons; not the least of which are the benefits to soil health that compost brings.


Meanwhile, on farms and ranches, composting on a much larger scale occurs as a station in the cycle of life. When done properly, the composting of animal mortalities is an effective way of dealing with animal carcasses while providing beneficial soil amendments.

For a number of reasons, little thought has traditionally been given to the composting of human remains. But in the State of Washington, that may soon change. State Senator Jamie Pederson has introduced a bill that would “expand the options for disposing of human remains,” NBC reported in December. The Staff Summary of the bill describes recomposition, or the composting of human remains, as a “process … similar to those used for animals. This process is safe and effective for human disposition. It is natural, gentle, and sustainable, reducing carbon emissions. It uses one-eighth of the energy of cremation.”


Leading the call for the legalization of recomposition is Katrina Spade, who invented a system for composting human remains. The recomposition “process involves placing unembalmed human remains wrapped in a shroud in a 5-foot-by-10-foot cylindrical vessel with a bed of organic material such as wood chips, alfalfa and straw,” NBC reports. “Air is then periodically pulled into the vessel, providing oxygen to accelerate microbial activity. Within approximately one month, the remains are reduced to a cubic yard of compost.”

“It was like a lightbulb went off and I started to envision a system that uses the same principles as mortality composting,” Spade says, “that would be meaningful and appropriate for human beings.”


In 2017, Spade founded Recompose, a Benefit Corporation whose goal is to bring the recomposition process to the public. “This natural process gently converts human remains into soil, so that we can nourish new life after we die,” the company states. “Our modular system uses nature's principles to return our bodies to the earth, sequestering carbon and improving soil health. In fact, we've calculated carbon savings over a metric ton per person.”


“Recompose takes guidance from nature,” the company continued. “At the heart of our model is a system that will gently return us to the earth after we die.”


The legislative staff summary further states, “For a world that has been remade by technology, making many things better, cheaper and environmentally friendly, it is pretty astonishing that in 2019 we are left with two legal ways to dispose of human remains; both of which that have been around for thousands of years.”


The two legal ways referred to are traditional burial and cremation, both of which present environmental problems. Casket burial involves the use of formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals which leach into the soil, and cremation introduces greenhouse gases and other chemicals into the atmosphere.


In recent years, concerns over the environmental impacts of traditional methods have led to alternatives such as green burial, “a way of allowing bodies to decompose naturally—without chemical preservatives or disinfectants (aka embalming fluid). Bodies are recycled naturally into the soil.” Unlike recomposition, green burials are legal in all fifty states.


“We really only have two easily accessible options in the U.S. — cremation and burial,” Spade said. “And the question is: Why do we only have two options, and what would it look like if we had a dozen?”


By Robert Kropp

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By Cole Rosengren October 15, 2025
Stress levels are high for CPG companies and packaging groups as extended producer responsibility programs unfold in multiple states. This was on display at three recent Boston events hosted by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, How2Recycle and the Northeast Recycling Council, with questions flying about costs, policy harmonization and relationships with regulators. Paul Nowak, executive director of GreenBlue, adopted the role of support group leader for a room full of representatives from many of the world’s largest CPG companies in his opening talk at SPC Advance. He reminded them that “you are not alone” and urged them to take the long view on this major industry shift. “What you see at the end of the change is not what you see during the change,” said Nowak, drawing on examples from prior industry shifts as well as other major life events. “You are in this uncomfortable period right now where it’s not moving as rapidly as you would think and you don’t have the historic perspective yet of where it could go.” Sticker shock While CPGs are familiar with EPR costs from programs in other countries, the complexity and scale of the U.S. rollout in seven states is presenting its own unique challenges. Oregon is the only state that’s begun collecting fees, and already the costs are high. Circular Action Alliance, the producer responsibility organization selected for the majority of state programs to date, estimates a budget of $188 million in the program’s first year, with that figure growing in the years ahead. Charlie Schwarze, board chair for CAA and senior director of packaging stewardship at Keurig Dr Pepper, said the costs are starting to resonate with major companies. KDP, for example, has been working to sort out different aspects of its packaging in terms of licensing arrangements, private label manufacturing partnerships and other factors. This requires a close relationship with the company’s finance, R&D and procurement teams to gather data and make cost projections. “It’s been a bit of a slow-moving process because the dollars, at least in 2025, are not extremely notable. But they’re going to get bigger pretty quickly,” he said, citing Colorado and California’s programs on the horizon. Shane Buckingham, chief of staff at CAA, said it will be months until companies have a better sense of the true costs. The group set initial fees for California, which won’t be invoiced until August 2026, but those fee levels are expected to change once SB 54 regulations are finalized . “Please don’t take our early fee schedule of being indicative of what your cost will be in 2027, it’s just a drop in the bucket,” he said. “The fees are going to go up significantly in California because we have to fund a $500 million [plastic] mitigation fund, we’re going to have system funding to improve recycling, source reduction, reuse, refill.” SPC Director Olga Kachook encouraged attendees to think about these fees as motivation to innovate rather than a burden. In her view, avoided fees through ecomodulation could be viewed as “possible new investment capital” for covering the costs of material switches, R&D, MRF testing, consumer education campaigns and more. “We can innovate to those lower fees by switching to incentivized materials and formats and then we can reinvest the savings back into sustainable materials and infrastructure that seemed out of reach,” she said. Searching for harmony All three events also featured ample discussion about if or how aspects of current EPR programs could be better aligned. While regulators are working to align certain definitions where possible, they also noted that certain state programs were uniquely designed for a reason. David Allaway, senior policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, said during NERC’s Rethink Resource Use Conference that he sees a potential benefit to harmonizing ecomodulation approaches in some cases. But at the same time, he said, “I fear that the push for harmonization will lead to a race to the bottom” by potentially limiting the ability for states to craft policies based on their respective needs. As for those who critique other unique aspects of Oregon’s law, such as responsible end market requirements , Allaway said “that’s not negotiable for us,” as market issues were a leading motivation for the law in the first place. Allaway said Oregon’s system was established based on specific regional priorities, such as putting an end to exporting certain types of material that led to dumping in other countries. The state’s approach to ecomodulation and life cycle analysis is also informed by years of work on greenhouse gas inventories and consumption-based accounting, which challenges many commonly held assumptions about recyclability . Each state has its own unique factors in terms of collection access and market infrastructure. Colorado, for example, has many areas that will be getting recycling service for the first time. Maine also has many rural areas that previously had access to recycling but lost it in recent years. Meanwhile, in Maryland, collection service may be more common but local end markets are lacking for certain commodities. Jason Bergquist, vice president of consulting firm RecycleMe, said during the NERC event that he hears concerns from clients about where this is all headed. “If we get to a couple years down the road and we’ve got, let’s just pretend, 25 states with EPR, with different deadlines, different [covered material] lists, different definitions, different ecomodulation — my concern as a fan of EPR is that the pushback will be so significant that it could get existential for the producers,” he said, in terms of costs and compliance management. At the same time, Bergquist said the experiences of packaging EPR in Europe and Canada show it may take years to get toward any kind of harmonized system. Back at SPC Advance and the co-located How2Recycle Summit, California loomed large throughout the week when it came to these questions. Karen Kayfetz, chief of CalRecycle’s product stewardship branch, said regulators from different EPR states try to talk to one another as much as possible but in some cases they’re limited by the statutes that created these programs. “We each have our own legal frameworks we have to work within,” she said. “So harmonization starts with the legislatures, and that is not our responsibility, but it is something that we could see change and evolve over the coming years.” As all of these complex questions get worked out, Kayfetz reminded attendees that CalRecycle may currently be “the face” of the program but that’s not the long-term goal. “What would make me the happiest is if you leave here thinking ‘let’s go talk more to CAA.’ Because EPR is a policy mechanism that is meant to be a public-private partnership where the public entity ... is overseeing the PRO,” she said. “They are your partner and we are their police.” In a separate session, CAA’s Buckingham described the work of ramping up different state fee and reporting programs as building a plane while flying it. The group is working to streamline its own reporting processes as much as possible, but they and others anticipate things will only get more complicated in the near term. “2026 will bring with it a new set of EPR laws and recycled content laws,” predicted KDP’s Schwarze, “and they’re going to be different than what we have right now.” Read on Packaging Dive.
September 17, 2025
The City of Medford won the 2025 Environmental Leadership Award for Outstanding Community presented by the Northeast Recycling Council, for its innovative work to reduce waste and create a more sustainable waste collection system through the City’s free curbside composting program. “I'm thankful to our team at City Hall, the Solid Waste Taskforce, our consultants Strategy Zero Waste and our volunteers for working so hard to launch our curbside composting program and making it such a meaningful success for our community,” Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn said. “This award shows that the work we’re doing in both composting and recycling is having real, transformative effects on how our community thinks about waste and the steps we’re taking to create a more sustainable environment for the future. We are honored to be recognized by the Northeast Recycling Council for these efforts.” Each year, NERC honors a community, an organization, and an individual for their outstanding contributions to recycling education and innovation. This year will mark the 9th annual Environmental Leadership Awards Ceremony, recognizing individuals and organizations who help further NERC’s waste and recycling goals. “Our committee is wholeheartedly impressed by the work of the City of Medford, and how important and impactful that work is for the community,” said Sophie Leone, Development and Program Manager at NERC. “It is a perfect representation of NERC’s mission to minimize waste, conserve natural resources, and advance a sustainable economy through facilitated collaboration and action and we are very excited to bestow the City of Medford with this award.” You can read more about the Environmental Leadership Awards here . And if you haven’t signed up for Medford’s free curbside composting program, you can do that at medfordcomposts.com . Read on MedfordMA.org.
By Resource Recycling September 10, 2025
In the Northeast, recycled commodity prices continued to decline in April-June, with MRFs experiencing an average decrease of nearly 6% compared to the first quarter of 2025, according to the Northeast Recycling Council’s (NERC) second-quarter MRF Values Survey Report. NERC’s 25th quarterly report analyzed data from 19 MRFs across 12 states, excluding two facilities from the average blended value “because they did not market enough commodities within Q2 to provide a representative comparison with other MRFs.” Compared to the previous quarter, the responding MRFs reported average values per ton for blended recyclables with residuals at $82.68, a decrease of 7.74%, or $96.21 per ton, a 5.99% decline without residuals. Thirteen of the 17 MRFs contributing to the weighted average were single-stream, while four operated on a dual-stream/source-separated basis. In the Northeast, dual-stream facilities reported a blended value of $99.74 without residuals and $86.52 including residuals, experiencing decreases of 7% and 7.16% from the previous quarter, respectively. Single-stream MRFs recorded blended values of $95.08 without residuals, down 5.7%, and $81.28,down 8.3%, with residuals. Factors such as tariffs and weak demand have led major waste haulers to adjust their forecasts, anticipating challenges due to economic uncertainty for the remainder of 2025. This dip in commodity prices was reflected in second-quarter earnings reports, with four companies reporting an average year-over-year decrease of 15% in commodity values. Houston-based WM projected a $15 million decline in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization due to softening demand. However, the emergence of new and upgraded polymer facilities is enhancing processing capabilities, driven by the expectation of high demand for recycled PET. A version of this story appeared in Resource Recycling on Sept 9. Read on Resource Recycling.