Ep 73 |From Dust to Dust...or to Soil: Katrina Spade and the Recompose Vision for an Eco-Friendlier Death Industry

Business for Good Podcast

Whether we like it or not, one fact of modern living is that every day we’re creating greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution. But should our final act on the earthly stage also necessitate one last pollutive hurrah?

Katrina Spade is on a mission to offer a better way to deal with human corpses, and it involves a process called natural organic reduction. It’s essentially a fancy way of saying she’s invented a method of accelerated composting for your body. Rather than cremating your corpse, which involves substantial pollution, and rather than burial, which typically means sealing your body off from nature with concrete liners, hermetically sealed caskets, preservatives in your body, and more, Katrina wants to turn your body into healthy, rich soil, within just one month.

After founding Recompose, Katrina helped change laws in three states now (Washington, Oregon, and Colorado) to allow her method, and has already opened an operational human composting facility in Seattle. In addition to dozens of composts completed, they have nearly 1,000 paying customers who’ve already pre-ordered their own composting, just in the same way you might pre-order a plot in a cemetery.

So far Recompose has raised about $12 million from investors (including author Margaret Atwood!) and is just getting started in their effort to empower you to give nutrients back to the planet when you’re done with your body.