‘Gonna change the world’: Inside the first large-scale human composting facility

KOIN

AUBURN, Wash. (KOIN) — “When I saw this I thought this is the thing that’s gonna change the world,” Return Home CEO Micah Truman told KOIN 6 News in early March, standing outside a nondescript warehouse tucked away in the Seattle suburb of Auburn. Inside, construction crews raced to get Washington’s largest natural organic reduction facility up and running by April to meet the growing demand for the alternative to traditional burial or cremation. 

Truman worked in banking and finance, making the switch to the funeral industry a little more than two years ago when he heard about the move to legalize natural organic reduction, more commonly known as human composting. Return Home calls it “terramation.”

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Regardless of the name, the concept is the same. A body goes in a vessel along with a bulking agent like alfalfa, sawdust or wood chips. Add water, air and heat then, after about 30 days, the body — with the exception of bone and teeth, which need to be ground up — is reduced to dirt. A machine screens out inorganic material like metal screws or silicone implants. Then the compost rests for another 30 days before the process is complete.

Read the rest here: https://www.koin.com/news/special-reports/gonna-change-the-world-inside-the-first-large-scale-human-composting-facility/