Maine just legalized composting human remains. What’s next?

Mainers can now have their bodies turned into compost after they die.

A law allowing human composting facilities, the second of its kind in New England, went into effect Aug. 9 without the governor’s signature.

To become compost, a process formally called “natural organic reduction,” a human body is placed in a special container and combined with materials such as straw and wood chips.

The container is heated to kill viruses and bacteria while speeding up the decomposition process, which a month or two later produces around a cubic yard of soil. That’s equivalent to 27 standard size, one-cubic-foot bags of soil from a garden center.

Human composting is another new after-death choice in Maine, where “green burials” have also gained popularity in recent years. Mainers choosing these methods are concerned about the environmental impacts of traditional options and want to literally return to the earth one day.

“The interest has always been around,” said Chuck Lakin , a longtime funeral choice advocate and volunteer for the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maine. “Now that it can happen…I think it’s just going to keep growing.”

A few Mainers have already had their remains shipped to facilities in western states, returning home in the mail as soil.

They underwent a similar process to livestock composting , which farmers use to dispose of dead animals.

The new law requires Maine facilities doing this to be licensed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The department did not respond to a request for information about whether it has received any applications, but Lakin said six or seven different people have contacted the alliance about starting one.

Employees of such operations need to be certified by the department, and the law requires a death certificate and a medical examiner or death investigator certificate that says the body doesn’t need to be examined further before composting begins.

The facility also has to wait 48 hours after the death unless the person died of a contagious disease.

The law lays out standards for privacy, use of the composting containers and handling of the remains after composting.

Composting human bodies is still illegal in most states, but existing companies hope to expand as the idea gains traction. It’s been doing so quickly since Washington was the first to legalize it in 2019: when the Maine law was introduced last spring, the state would have been the seventh. By the time the law took effect, it was the 12th.

Composting bills like Maine’s have been introduced or are in progress in six more states , including Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They have failed in New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

Earth Funerals, a human composting company with facilities in Washington state and Nevada, has plans to expand east soon. It’s already composted some former Maine residents, said Haley Morris, the company’s head of communications and governmental affairs.

Placed in one of a facility’s 70 “vessels” after death, customers turn into soil in about a month. It costs roughly $5,000, which is less than a traditional funeral and more than most cremations. Families have used the soil in their home gardens and at memorial services, or divided it among loved ones, Morris said.

“We’ve invested a lot in the technology that allows people to become soil when they die,” she said.

Cremation, the most popular option in Maine today, releases chemicals and more than 850 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air, by one estimate. Traditional burial requires chemical embalming of the body, and the grave has a concrete lining. These are a few of the environmental concerns that drive Mainers to seek alternatives.

Green burial, or burial in a biodegradable container without embalming the body, has been gaining popularity in Maine too, with several cemeteries dedicated to the practice. Other alternatives include outdoor cremation, a water cremation method and burials with a “mushroom shroud” that consumes the body.

green burial options

Maine’s 1st conservation cemetery offers climate friendly burials

A national 2023 report by the Natural Funeral Directors Association found that 60 percent of those surveyed were interested in natural burial of some kind, up nearly 5 percent from two years before.

Lakin said green burial and human composting share the same result: the human body’s return to the soil.

“It’s just that one can be scattered around the country, and the other you have a place to go visit, if that’s something you want or need to do,” he said.

That’s a compelling reason for people to choose composting over burial, he said. Far-flung family members can schedule a memorial service later and each carry some of the deceased person with them, similar to cremation.

Maine’s primary bill sponsor, State Rep. Vicki Doudera, D-Camden, testified last year that the bill was primarily about giving people choices for their death. She said it was introduced because constituents had asked for the option to be legalized.

“Mainers should have the freedom to return to the earth in a way that resonates with their lives and values,” she said.

Gardeners who supported the bill also described a spiritual component to the composting process and the idea of completely returning to the earth upon their death.

Some religious groups, the Catholic Church in particular, say the process doesn’t respect human dignity and treats the human body like waste. They’ve also highlighted the part of the process where bones that don’t decompose are ground up and put back into compost.

“The ultimate denial of the soul,” one Christian publication recently called human composting. “ Repulsive ,” said another.

In Maine, no one testified against the bill. Others, including some Christians, said to the state Legislature’s health and human services committee that human composting is in line with religious teachings of life on Earth being temporary.

“For dust you are and to dust you will return,” one Brunswick resident quoted from the Bible.