The Delaware state House legislature passed a bill on Tuesday that would allow people to have their bodies composted rather than buried or cremated.

According to the Associated Press, the practice known as “natural organic reduction” was passed by a vote of 37-2 and now goes to Governor John Carney’s desk for ultimate authorization or denial. 

This bill would not allow people to just toss their dead relatives on their backyard compost pile willy-nilly. The process would still have to be undertaken by licensed morticians and otherwise approved handlers of dead people so as not to create a very uncomfortable and smelly situation for neighbors and such. 

The process of human composting, according to the Associated Press report, takes about 30 days or more depending on the process and is performed in a large tank where the body is mixed with wood chips, straw and other organic materials much like traditional compost of non-human materials. The mixture is exposed to warm air, turned periodically and after full decomposition it would be returned to the family of the deceased to be used in the garden, to plant trees, vegetables or whatever they please. 

“At the time of laying in, our staff places the body into a composting vessel surrounded by a mixture of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw carefully calibrated for each individual,” said Recompose, a Washington-based human composting service on their website. “Much like the moment when a body is interred into the earth during a burial, the laying in represents a moment of transition. The vessel is closed and the transformation into soil begins.”

Chief sponsor of the bill, Rep. Sean Lynn told the Associated Press that the practice is considered a “gentle, respectful, environmentally friendly death care option.”

“Natural organic reduction is a sophisticated process that applies cutting-edge technology and engineering to accelerate the natural process of turning a body into soil,” Rep. Lynn said to the Associated Press.

If the bill passes the governor’s desk, Delaware would become the eighth state to legalize human composting behind Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, California, New York and Nevada. Rep. Lynn said that soil testing in these states of compost made from human remains has shown the soil to be “high quality and regenerative.”

This practice has been hailed by environmental activists as less energy-consuming than cremation and more environmentally friendly than other traditional burial methods, especially those that utilize chemicals like formaldehyde. The process also does not add to the need for more cemetery space, which a Georgia cemetery owner estimated to be over 1 million acres of land in the United States alone. 

“My first reaction was: Why haven’t we done this before? It’s not really a new idea. It’s just new-ish that we’re applying it to humans.” said Jennifer DeBruyn, an environmental microbiology professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville to CNBC in February of 2023.

The language of the Delaware bill would preclude human remains from being used for composting should they contain any radioactive implants such as those used to treat cancer without the need for surgery. Remains confirmed to have certain infections such as Ebola or neurodegenerative disorders such as mad cow disease would also not be eligible under the law if passed. More specific regulations are slated to be developed over the next year if the bill is passed. 

“We’ve got 29-year-olds in Miami signing up. Young people are going to teach us how to die better,” said Micah Truman to CNBC, CEO of Return Home, a Seattle-based human composting facility.

One might think this process would be cheaper than traditional burial services but it can actually be a bit more expensive given the cost of materials. For instance, Recompose charges about $7,000 for their human composting services whereas the average cost of cremation in the same state is about $6,028 according to Choice Mutual. Burials do tend to cost a bit more in most states, however. 

Seeing as how this is High Times, I would be remiss if I did not mention, in writing where my legal representatives can see it, that after I die I would like my body to be composted and used to grow cannabis plants, peyote cacti and psilocybin mushrooms.

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A Colorado funeral home is under investigation for potentially falsifying death certificates and giving fake cremated ashes to its bereaved customers after nearly 200 decaying corpses were found on its grounds.

Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado has been accused by at least four families of giving them fake human remains after a bad smell at the funeral home led to the police discovery of 189 rotting human bodies, almost all of which have yet to be identified according to an article by the Associated Press.

Return to Nature reportedly listed third-party crematoriums on death certificates given back to bereaved family members after paying for funeral services. An Associated Press investigation culminated with the owners of said funeral homes vehemently denying having done any recent business with Return to Nature. The AP said they reviewed four death certificates provided to them by families who had used Return To Nature’s cremation services and found that none of the cremations appear to have actually happened, or at the very least did not happen at the locations provided by Return to Nature. 

“My mom’s last wish was for her remains to be scattered in a place she loved, not rotting away in a building,” said Tanya Wilson, who told the Associated Press that she believes the ashes she spread in Hawaii in August were fake. “Any peace that we had, thinking that we honored her wishes, you know, was just completely ripped away from us.”

According to the AP, all the death certificates they reviewed listed a crematorium owed by Wilbert Funeral Services. An attorney for Wilbert Funeral Services, Lisa Epps, said they stopped doing cremations for Return to Nature several months before the deaths listed on the provided death certificates. Epps told the AP that no less than 10 families have contacted them regarding cremations they did not perform. The owner of a second crematorium, Roselawn Funeral Home, also said they were recently contacted by a family regarding a 2021 cremation Roselawn did not perform. 

Wilbert Funeral Services reportedly stopped doing business with Return to Nature because of purported financial woes. According to the AP, public records showed Return to Nature was recently the subject of an eviction notice and had records of unpaid taxes. They also recently had to pay a $21,000 settlement to Wilbert Funeral Services because they allegedly did not pay for what Epps described as “a couple hundred cremations.”

The owners of Return to Nature, Jon and Carrie Hallford, have not yet been arrested but have not responded to any of the AP’s requests for comment. A member of one of the four families AP interviewed, all of whom suspect they were given dry concrete instead of human remains, said he confronted Carie Hallford about his concerns when he was originally handed the urn containing what she thought were the ashes of his mother

Jesse Elliott, brother of Tanya Wilson, told the AP that when Carie Hallford handed him particularly heavy ashes, he asked her about it and Hallford said “Jesse, of course this is your mother.” Elliott and Wilson reportedly took the ashes to another funeral home director who told them the ashes looked very strange.

“I’ve never seen anything that looks like that in the range of what cremated remains would typically expect to look like,” said Amber Flickinger from Platt’s Funeral Home to the AP.

Another potential victim of the alleged falsifying of ashes, Michelle Johnston, told the AP she became suspicious after the news broke about all the bodies found at Return to Nature. She closely inspected her husband’s ashes and found, after applying a bit of water to them, that they turned into what she thought was concrete. Properly cremated remains do not behave this way and will remain in a brittle state, according to Faith Haug, chair of the mortuary science program at Colorado’s Arapahoe Community College.

“I was kind of getting to a place where I wasn’t losing it every day,” Johnston said to the AP. “I don’t know where my husband is.”

Charges against the Hallford’s and Return to Nature Funeral Home had not yet been filed at the time of publication but staggering criminal fines and a maximum two-year prison sentence are on the table, according to the AP. Colorado is known for having particularly lax laws regarding funeral services and cremations, and this is actually not the first time that concrete has potentially been substituted for human remains in Colorado. Another Colorado funeral home director was found guilty of selling body parts and fake ashes and received a 20-year prison sentence for mail fraud in January. 

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