Viral video sparks debate on human composting. Costs, 14 legal states, backyard rules, and how bodies become soil for trees.

The eco-friendly alternative to traditional burial or cremation transforms the human body into nutrient rich soil Last December, the country's first funeral home offering natural organic reduction — ...

In 2020, Recompose was the first U.S. company to develop the technology needed for the commercial composting of human bodies, disrupting a funeral industry that had been largely unchanged for decades.

When Howard Fischer eventually dies, he is going to be composted in Seattle. He’ll be wrapped in cloth, placed on a bed of wood chips, and then his family will cover him in alfalfa and flowers. After ...

Composting looks simple from the outside. Toss in some scraps, add a few leaves, wait a while, and out comes rich soil. In ...

Composting is both an art and a science, especially when it comes to backyard composting. It’s that perfect balance of ingredients that creates a mini-ecosystem for microorganisms to thrive, breaking ...

The push for environmental consciousness has sparked the rise of not only green energy initiatives, but now also the move to "green burials" or "human composting" practices over more traditional ...

Last week was a difficult milestone for Sean Hanna of Encino. It marked one year since he lost his partner Stephen Staunton to brain cancer. Staunton was an avid gardener. He was also a really big fan ...

Composting can be messy. Not only does it take up outdoor space, but it also requires you to cultivate a delicate balance of carbon and nitrogen. Imagine if, instead, you could skip ahead a few steps ...

Composting — a term used and promoted by the environmentally minded, but not something all of us are all-knowing about. If you’re a New York City resident, however, you should probably begin getting ...

Reporting for this story was supported by the Climate Equity Reporting Project at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. In the first few years after Monique Figueiredo founded Compostable LA ...