For The Wild - KATRINA SPADE on New Life from Death ⧸346

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with

00:00:15.460 Katrina Spade. There are more ways to care for bodies than cremation and burial. Metal 0.98

00:00:21.700 caskets to embalming to the concrete box that that casket is put in. All of that is this

00:00:28.580 kind of perverse like protecting of the body because nothing will preserve a body forever

00:00:34.240 and so being able to embrace that decomposition that beauty of that process which is creating

00:00:40.900 soil all over the globe which means new life is created out of death. Katrina Spade is the founder

00:00:48.760 and CEO of Recompose, a public benefit corporation leading the transformation of the funeral industry.

00:00:56.100 Katrina is a designer and the inventor of a system that transforms the dead into soil,

00:01:01.460 aka human composting. Since founding in 2017, Katrina and Recompose have led the successful

00:01:08.360 legislation of human composting in Washington State in 2019. Recompose became the first

00:01:14.880 company in the world to offer the service in December of 2020. The process is now also legal

00:01:20.740 in Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, California, and New York. Katrina and her team have been featured in

00:01:27.340 Fast Company, NPR, The Atlantic, BBC, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Times. She is an

00:01:34.320 Echoing Green Fellow, an Ashoka Fellow, and a Harvard Kennedy School visiting social innovator.

00:01:39.520 oh katrina thank you so much for being with us today i'm really looking forward to

00:01:50.500 seeing how this conversation unfolds thank you for having me so i am thinking about how we want

00:01:59.000 to open this potentially winding conversation and i think i'd love to start with a really

00:02:07.360 solid understanding of what Recompose does and the design behind your work.

00:02:14.860 So if you could offer us some insights into what the Recompose process is and the design

00:02:20.100 and practice that went into making this a reality, that'd be really wonderful.

00:02:25.800 That's such a good place to start because Recompose was inspired by lots of different

00:02:31.700 things or I guess by a few very specific things and especially without the benefit of visuals

00:02:37.860 it's really good to get into the what we do and and the process um so I guess yeah I'll start

00:02:45.540 with the inspiration I mean I was about a little over 30 setting the scene for you it was 10 years

00:02:50.960 ago I was in graduate school for architecture and I had one small child I had two small children but

00:02:58.120 one of them was just a couple years old. And so he, he was growing up on that, like very obvious

00:03:06.960 day to day, the kid is getting older right in front of my very eyes situation. And I just

00:03:13.340 remember, and I credit him for this whole thing coming together, looking at him, his name is Kale

00:03:19.800 and just realizing that, um, he's growing up really fast. And so am I. And someday I would be

00:03:27.780 god willing 70 and then 80 and someday I would die so this sort of like I had turned 30 and I

00:03:35.500 had a small child who was growing up so fast made me feel my mortality and then because I was in

00:03:41.180 graduate school for architecture I had the luxury of thinking about design thinking about systems

00:03:49.280 that humans create and have created and because I was feeling my mortality I started to look into

00:03:54.840 the American funeral industry, which is just a fascinating industry historically and sort of

00:04:02.900 systems wise. So that sort of was the groundwork for how Recompose came to be. So I started to

00:04:11.200 think about my own body and what would I want when I died? Very simple question, very personal,

00:04:17.260 and again, connected to design, but also just like, what would I like to have? And I come from

00:04:25.400 a family that's not religious, so I don't have a faith tradition that leads me to a particular

00:04:30.480 choice. And so I was looking at the two main options we have in the US, cremation

00:04:36.520 and conventional burial. And I use conventional instead of traditional. I can come back to that,

00:04:44.040 but very specifically. So conventional burial is where body is embalmed and buried typically

00:04:51.020 in a casket, which is then placed in a concrete grave liner, which is then in a cemetery with

00:04:57.460 a headstone. And so that's when I say conventional burial, that's what I mean. And so cremation and

00:05:04.140 conventional burial were, and I guess still are, the two main options that are widely available

00:05:10.140 in the US. And I knew I didn't want either of those. And I pretty quickly found out about a

00:05:19.300 practice that is typically called natural burial or green burial. This is something that's

00:05:24.760 practiced all over the world today. It's part of many faith traditions. It is different from

00:05:30.660 conventional burial because you're placing the body into the ground with limited additional

00:05:38.460 stuff so typically in either just a shroud or a pine box the body goes into the ground in that

00:05:45.860 shroud or that pine box and it's a way for nature to take back that person's body and really it's a

00:05:52.520 I think in a lot of ways a perfect funeral option natural burial. So when I found out about that

00:06:00.720 option I thought that is beautiful I'd much prefer it to cremation or conventional burial

00:06:05.420 but I love living in cities and so do billions of people around the globe so again from a design

00:06:14.260 perspective the question I started to ask was how would the inspiration like how can natural burial

00:06:20.460 as inspiration become appropriate for for those of us in urban settings knowing that it you know

00:06:27.540 natural burial does take land you need land for any type of burial and so that was really the first

00:06:35.200 main inspiration for Recompose was placing a body into the earth and letting nature take over.

00:06:41.940 So natural burial, again, I do see it as almost a perfect system. And body goes into the ground,

00:06:51.300 that piece of land may be connected to conservation easements or conservation trust or

00:06:57.080 conservation work, or might not be. But either way, you're really letting nature do the work

00:07:01.680 of caring for bodies. And so as I was exploring that idea, my friend Kate, we had a phone call

00:07:11.340 and she knew I was looking at the funeral industry. She also knew I had, I was and still

00:07:18.020 am obviously kind of a compost nerd. And she called me and asked me if I knew about the

00:07:22.920 practice that farmers use to compost whole cows and horses. If they can't be eaten,

00:07:28.600 farmers for a long time have composted cows and horses and when she told me that it was truly

00:07:35.680 like a little light bulb went off and I was like ah if you can compost a cow clearly we're not that

00:07:40.300 different biologically you can compost a human so that's where it all came together again this was

00:07:45.500 just about 10 well a little more than 10 years ago now and so I started to write a thesis for

00:07:51.820 architecture school. It was a place in which we would compost humans and transform them into soil.

00:07:59.960 And I realize it's helpful for folks who don't know to hear that composting, you know, what

00:08:06.520 happens in the ground, in the soil is decomposition, but composting is human-led

00:08:14.240 natural decomposition. And it's typically a way to accelerate what would happen naturally,

00:08:20.780 either out in the forest or under the earth. So when you say composting, it's not just what

00:08:27.920 nature would do in a burial ground in a graveyard. It's actually putting together the materials

00:08:34.300 that create the perfect environment for microbial activity to break something down.

00:08:40.100 And in this case, we're using composting and plant material to break a human body down.

00:08:45.800 Yeah, I want to hear more about this specifically. And there was a article called Life After Death, What Human Burial Options Will Look Like in a Sustainable Future by Joan Miners. And she writes, quote,

00:09:00.060 Spade's design features human-sized honeycomb-shaped vessels stacked three high in a tranquil

00:09:06.160 indoor garden-like space open for family visitation. Using a balance of wood chips,

00:09:11.400 alfalfa, straw, and airflow to create the optimal environment for microbial decomposition activity, 0.58

00:09:17.540 she's already producing usable biohazard-free compost, end quote. So yeah, I'd love to hear

00:09:24.460 more about the tangible material process of this. And even if you could get into the specifics of

00:09:32.800 sourcing materials, et cetera, that would be really interesting to hear.

00:09:37.360 So that was actually a beautiful description of recompose. The most tangible difference between

00:09:42.920 natural burial and human composting is that human composting takes place inside of a vessel.

00:09:49.140 and the recomposed vessels my brother-in-law actually helped design the the structure that

00:09:56.280 holds these stainless steel vessels and it is a honeycomb design hexagons as a side note are

00:10:03.660 really great structurally they're very strong shapes but they're also a way to use space

00:10:09.500 efficiently if you imagine a honeycomb it's taking making use of space in a way that a grid

00:10:16.440 like a checkerboard does not necessarily do. If you're trying to place cylindrical vessels,

00:10:23.240 which our vessels are on the inside cylindrical, then using hexagons as the framework is a really

00:10:29.200 efficient use of space. And of course, it makes us think of nature as well. So I just love that

00:10:34.400 those hexagons have so many purposes. But inside of the recomposed vessel, the basic process is

00:10:40.920 our staff first mixes up a blend of wood chips, straw, and alfalfa. And that's the perfect blend

00:10:49.880 of carbon and nitrogen materials. And it's also a mix of materials that has the right structural

00:10:55.440 properties so that airflow can keep happening. If you imagine that sproinginess, I'm not sure

00:11:02.640 that's a real word, but the sproinginess of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw in a mixture,

00:11:07.560 like a almost like a salad smells like a fresh cut meadow really allows airflow to happen and we

00:11:13.860 create a bed of that material inside of the vessel place a person's body on top of it and then cover

00:11:20.440 the person's body with more of that same material so the person is cocooned inside of a mix of

00:11:27.240 wood chips alfalfa and straw inside of the vessel and then over the next 30 to 40 days

00:11:33.700 the vessel's doing a couple of things. Number one, we're aerating. So we're providing oxygen

00:11:40.060 to the microbes that are doing the work inside. We're constantly pulling a slow volume of air

00:11:46.180 through each of the vessels. And that's ensuring, again, that the microbes have oxygen and they can

00:11:51.700 break down everything inside of that vessel. The second thing the vessel's doing is each one has

00:11:57.960 two temperature probes inside it. And so that is important because when the microbes are working,

00:12:05.700 they are creating heat. Typically, when we place a body inside of a vessel, we've received it.

00:12:12.040 It's usually been then stored inside cooled storage on site for a couple of days, even a

00:12:17.960 couple of weeks. So the body itself is very cool. And we do that so that we can wait for potentially

00:12:25.780 a family to arrive and have a service. We don't embalm bodies, which slows the decomposition

00:12:32.280 process, because what we're trying to do eventually is actually encourage and embrace

00:12:36.880 the decomposition process. But placing a body in cooled storage is a very common way of holding

00:12:43.720 onto it until it's time for, in this case, composting. So we've placed a cool body into a

00:12:49.900 vessel, the material, the plant material is fairly cool, kind of ambient temperature. And after we've

00:12:56.180 done that, typically six to 12 hours later, we see temperatures inside the vessel rise to about

00:13:02.800 150 degrees Fahrenheit. And what that means is that we've set everything up perfectly for microbes

00:13:08.660 to do the work. And I mean, it never ceases to amaze me that that temperature rise happened so

00:13:13.980 quickly. But those temperature probes inside the vessel are showing us that the temperatures are

00:13:19.700 staying high, we want to make sure that's happening because that's what ensures that

00:13:24.280 pathogens are destroyed. That's what ensures that the soil we give back to families or use

00:13:29.940 in conservation efforts is safe. So our team can see the temperature of the material inside the

00:13:36.500 vessel on basically a minute-to-minute basis. So that's the second thing the vessels are doing.

00:13:42.740 They're telling us the temperature inside. Usually after we've placed a body into the vessel,

00:13:48.240 we see those temperatures rise. The temperatures stay sustained over 131 degrees. That's the magic

00:13:56.220 biological number that we want to see it above. Typically, we see that sustained about above that

00:14:02.540 number for about a week. And as the temperatures start to fall a week later, our team presses a

00:14:09.920 button and the vessel slowly rotates. So that's the third thing that the vessels do. They rotate

00:14:15.100 slowly for a couple of hours, once a week or so, to get the temperatures back up by mixing,

00:14:21.340 ensuring airflow. And like any compost, if anyone out there is composted, you know,

00:14:27.220 you need air, you need to mix material so that the air can reach all of the

00:14:31.420 material and the microbes can thrive. I'm counting the things. It holds the material,

00:14:37.420 temperature, tells us the temperature, rotates, and is aerated. Those are the things that the

00:14:42.300 vessel is doing. After about 30 to 40 days, our team removes the soil and screens for non-organics,

00:14:52.240 like if you have a titanium hip or some other sort of metal implant, those get screened and

00:14:58.080 recycled. And our team takes the bone and they place it in a piece of equipment that reduces it

00:15:04.940 to a sand-like size. Then our team takes the reduced bone and the soil and places it together

00:15:12.680 in a cure bin where it cures for another two to four weeks. So the whole process might be two to

00:15:21.340 two and a half months. It depends. Every single person's body is different and nature is not on

00:15:26.600 a deadline as we know. But after that time, what you have is beautiful compost and families either

00:15:34.720 come to recompose to pick it up and use it to grow their gardens or plant a tree, or they can

00:15:40.740 donate it through us to conservation efforts. We have partners, land partners that use the compost

00:15:46.560 to help regenerate different forests. We're in the Seattle area, so a lot of forest and

00:15:53.000 different restoration projects tied to conservation lands. Wow, that's really fascinating to learn

00:16:00.480 about. And I definitely have questions of how you even came up with all of this, because it seems

00:16:07.180 complex and like there have been a lot of trial and error. And I guess besides the question of

00:16:15.780 how did you even come to this process? I think there's also people who might be saying, well,

00:16:24.120 where do the wood chips come from or the alfalfa or the straw? Is that sustainable in the way that

00:16:30.460 you are sourcing the materials for the process. So maybe if we could speak to both of those things

00:16:36.360 or you could for us, that would be really helpful to understand more deeply. Well, in terms of the

00:16:42.320 materials, the wood chips, the straw, the alfalfa, we're always looking to improve that. I'd say

00:16:47.960 that's a big kind of last to-do list for Recompose is to really dial in on where we're

00:16:56.880 getting those materials whether it's ideally locally regionally and then where is any kind

00:17:04.680 of processing of those materials coming in for example the straw we use is chopped to a couple

00:17:10.820 of inches and so we were just discussing in fact a couple of minutes ago in the team what when it

00:17:15.700 would be time or make sense to start chopping that straw on site instead of buying it chopped

00:17:22.040 already. So those are ongoing discussions, and they're actually all tied to the question of

00:17:28.280 really the carbon footprint of this death care option. I started thinking about this because

00:17:34.040 I suspected that cremation and conventional burial had carbon footprints that were too big

00:17:41.940 to be comfortable for me in terms of aligning a death care choice with the way I've tried to live.

00:17:48.340 But to be fair, I wasn't first thinking about the carbon footprint.

00:17:51.540 I was first thinking a little bit more conceptually, I guess, than that.

00:17:55.820 Like, I felt like cremation was a little bit wasteful.

00:17:59.760 I have something left when I die, right, in my body.

00:18:02.760 Even if it's small and withered at that point, like, how can I give that back rather than burn it up?

00:18:08.480 So that was the sort of conceptual thinking there.

00:18:11.240 And then on the conventional burial side, I knew I didn't want to place, yes, stuff is the best word. I don't want to judge it and say it's waste because if you love the idea of burial, then a casket isn't waste at all. But I didn't want to place stuff in the ground and I didn't have a whole lot of interest in having a headstone in a cemetery.

00:18:29.720 So as I continued to research, I found out that both of those options, cremation and conventional burial, have the same, almost the same carbon footprint.

00:18:40.520 Because on the one hand, you've got cremation with the burning of fossil gas.

00:18:46.200 And on the other side, you've got the manufacture and transport of caskets and graveliners and headstones.

00:18:52.820 And then the upkeep of the cemetery, mowing and watering kind of forever, right?

00:18:56.800 Those two practices have their own carbon footprint. What I love about human composting is you avoid the footprint of the manufacture and transport of all that stuff and the upkeep of the cemetery. And you avoid the burning of fossil fuels. But we're also sequestering carbon into the ground, into the soil where we want it. It's not going into the air.

00:19:20.780 So there's two pieces to the carbon savings with human composting. One is the avoidance of emissions, and the other is the sequestration of carbon in the process. So for those out there who like a carbon number, it's about a metric ton, a bit over, it's a metric ton plus of carbon saved per person who chooses to be composted versus cremated or buried in the conventional way.

00:19:45.700 And that can add up over time as more and more people choose it for sure.

00:19:49.560 When we think about plant material and where we're getting that material, all of that goes

00:19:54.820 into those calculations.

00:19:56.960 We're currently, our team is working on calculating those numbers again, because we've adjusted

00:20:04.040 lots of the equipment over time.

00:20:06.120 We want to make sure we've got accurate numbers.

00:20:08.760 And one of the things I recently found out was that what doesn't go into consideration

00:20:12.980 in all of those calculations is the benefit to, say, the forest. If the compost is going to the

00:20:20.880 forest, that carbon benefit of growing those trees is not taken into consideration. So good news,

00:20:28.260 I suspect the number will be higher. And in addition, we're always looking at things like

00:20:34.380 how far is that plant material coming from, that straw, those wood chips. And I realize,

00:20:40.320 you know you'd asked about a little bit more about the design process and I I love talking

00:20:46.880 about it I I don't even I don't know how accurate this is but I'll float it by you

00:20:52.660 see what you think um I went to architecture school late and I I was like a dabbler in design

00:21:00.640 I just liked moving things around on paper or honestly moving furniture around in my living

00:21:07.340 room. And I just liked thinking about how spaces affect me and people around me. But it took me

00:21:13.440 forever to realize there are careers in design. You can go and become an architect. And went back

00:21:19.660 to school after I was already 30, which is fairly late for something like that. I tend to think all

00:21:25.000 of us are designers. Even if for the people who are like, I just wake up and that's not the thing

00:21:31.260 I think about, I don't think about the clothes I wear or the way my house looks, kind of feel like

00:21:38.120 even that is a design choice. And we're always all kind of constantly designing our lives.

00:21:44.540 So I chafe against and sort of push back against the idea that there are people who are

00:21:50.260 expert in design. It's really an iterative process and anyone can start to think about how

00:21:57.480 space is affecting them, their emotional state. Does it bring you joy? Does it not?

00:22:05.160 I do think there are people who can like visualize something easier. I know like my dad's like,

00:22:09.540 I can't imagine what that would look like, but your mom can imagine what it would look like.

00:22:13.580 So I get that. But I think there's something really powerful about recognizing that all of

00:22:18.240 us are designers in different ways. But going back to the design process, I guess,

00:22:23.520 it's always always been about like one step in front of the other taking on something that might

00:22:30.600 seem incredibly daunting when I started again back in school 10 plus years ago there was no

00:22:37.000 part of me that thought this was going to exist in the world there was no part of me that was

00:22:41.680 thinking about a business model or was it possible to actually build this and so I had this freedom

00:22:48.040 of just imagining a space for the dead where we'd compost them with no doubt that it couldn't be

00:22:56.600 done because that wasn't the question. Not a thought about budget, nothing. And so then when

00:23:03.460 I approached it as a thesis project, presented that thesis project to my professors, sort of

00:23:12.800 got the, this is great from my parents and close friends, but kept getting indications from people

00:23:18.960 beyond my parents and close friends that it was something that they would actually really like

00:23:23.020 to be composted rather than cremated. And so then sort of took the next step, but only the next step

00:23:29.120 forward. That's very similar to the design process where you're trying to bite off chunks that are,

00:23:35.940 you know, chewable. I think at some point there was a probably a moment where I started to look

00:23:40.940 wider and think about the whole project of bringing human composting to life from a regulatory

00:23:48.300 legal standpoint through the biology and engineering of the process and vessels to

00:23:55.260 fundraising how the heck do you get the money together to do this so it pretty quickly became

00:24:00.860 a whole project and seeing the whole is really important but every day I mean just this morning

00:24:05.700 I woke up and I was feeling just a little edge of anxiety for whatever reason. And I said,

00:24:11.020 just go in and literally take one step and then another step and you'll get to the next spot.

00:24:35.700 Next week I'll be in flight

00:24:45.460 Turning sea into the night

00:24:51.620 It was carved into the stone

00:24:59.380 Thou indeed be alone

00:25:05.220 Time has come to shed your rose

00:25:12.760 Unraving all that we once chose

00:25:18.680 Chewing on forbidden fruits

00:25:28.360 And remember their roots

00:25:58.360 Now we return to bake our bread 0.99

00:26:09.580 Hailing into our own stead

00:26:17.220 We put our dreams out on the line

00:26:24.080 Turning sour on the fire

00:26:30.700 Watch the flower, watch the grass

00:26:35.500 Tell Descartes to cut his lice

00:26:44.120 It's our evening midnight's near

00:26:50.520 Dancing till it disappeared

00:27:20.520 You know, just thinking about how huge the funeral industry is, back to that article, Life After Death, What Human Burial Options Will Look Like in a Sustainable Future, Joan Myers also writes, quote,

00:27:40.420 conventional burial commonly cost American families between $8,000 and $25,000. In the U.S.,

00:27:47.460 the Green Burial Council reports the custom also results in an estimated 64,500 tons of steel,

00:27:56.580 1.6 million tons of concrete, 20 million feet of hardwood, 17,000 tons of copper and bronze,

00:28:03.540 and 827,000 gallons of toxic formaldehyde, methanol, and benzene embalming fluid being

00:28:11.680 placed underground with the deceased. That's not to mention the lead, zinc, and cobalt used in

00:28:17.560 some casket designs that might also leach out into the surrounding environment. End quote.

00:28:23.620 that's a lot to take in it doesn't surprise me but it does uh it does still feel shocking to see

00:28:34.020 those numbers and yeah how do you subvert this or these truths without falling back into

00:28:41.660 the profit traps of what is a billion dollar funeral industry well i mean first of all it

00:28:49.300 helps that I didn't do this for the money or as a business plan. I see money, we are in this

00:28:57.800 capitalist system, and I see those funds as fuel to make this exist. And I've had to reconcile that

00:29:05.620 existence within the capitalist system. And I'm still not very comfortable with it all.

00:29:12.040 And I decided that the most useful maybe thing I can do with my life is to make human composting

00:29:18.820 exist as many places as possible. So if that answers your question about the billion dollar

00:29:24.100 funeral industry, that's a start of it anyway. And like my whole team finds joy in making this

00:29:34.100 available in working with families to help them understand what it even is that their loved one

00:29:40.720 might be choosing in spreading the word that there are more ways to care for bodies than

00:29:47.840 cremation and burial like we find such joy in doing that and you know it is my job to make

00:29:53.520 sure that that as we do it we're creating something sustainable that can exist so the

00:29:58.020 business model has to be sustainable but it's so far from the first focus because if we're succeeding

00:30:04.460 in doing the process beautifully and caring for families in making more people aware that this

00:30:11.080 option exists, that all feeds into the sustainability long-term. I wanted to go back

00:30:16.980 to your question about the funeral industry and the design intent there, because I think you kind

00:30:22.000 of really just hit on it a little bit with that last quote. The funeral industry in the U.S. for

00:30:27.440 a long time, or actually since it started existing as a formal industry, which was, by the way, in

00:30:34.880 the 1860s after the Civil War, the funeral industry's first focus, but the beginning I would

00:30:40.580 say was protecting the body from the earth's elements. There's this really awesome newspaper

00:30:48.720 clipping from like 1875 or something. And it's an ad for a funeral home. And the ad is about how we

00:30:56.640 can protect your loved one's body from the earth, which I mean, it is the precise opposite of what

00:31:03.840 we're trying to do at Recompose, where we're trying to embrace or not even trying to, we 100%

00:31:09.720 embrace the earth's process we need it we love it it's what we're you know trying to mimic and

00:31:16.800 replicate and embrace metal caskets to embalming to the concrete box that that casket is put in

00:31:25.620 in almost every cemetery around all of that is like this kind of perverse like protecting of

00:31:32.560 the body which by the way you can't do forever anyway because nothing will preserve a body

00:31:39.040 forever but it's also being able to embrace that decomposition that beauty of that process which

00:31:47.200 is creating soil all over the globe soil is created from that natural decomposition which

00:31:55.280 means new life is created out of death and that's so i mean in a way it's so easy you know to like

00:32:03.120 of course we want to go that way because it's so easy. It's natural. It's natural.

00:32:11.080 Yeah, I think it's really fascinating how much the overculture has conditioned us to

00:32:18.100 not just be afraid of death, but afraid of allowing our bodies to be consumed back to

00:32:25.020 the earth. Because to me, that seems relieving that the body reunites with the soil and feeds.

00:32:34.740 And part of me wonders even where did this idea come from? It's interesting to hear from you

00:32:42.620 about the Civil War, the news clipping you found. Yeah, I wonder, I don't know if this is even

00:32:49.020 something we can talk about, but who thought this was ever a good idea to poison our bodies

00:32:56.040 so that they wouldn't return or it would take a while for them to return?

00:33:01.420 So there's, yeah, this cultural question for me. And of course, the healing of that cultural

00:33:06.980 question, which is how do we create ritual and heal ourselves in our psychology so we can let

00:33:15.020 go. We can surrender. We can reunite back with the earth. And then maybe one more tangent on this

00:33:20.700 is I find it really interesting how, of course, we don't want to let our bodies go back to the

00:33:27.120 earth and we don't really want to let any of our legacy go back. And when I say we, I'm kind of

00:33:31.440 talking about the over culture, the dominant culture. I think about buildings and we put

00:33:39.700 formaldehyde in plywood, we put formaldehyde in our bodies, we don't want to let the buildings

00:33:45.700 we build rot, although they still will rot. The tendency to want to cling to our short lifespans

00:33:57.880 or the lifespans of what we touch in this world, I'm just really trying to sit in the complexity of

00:34:04.740 what our belief systems are and our value systems are in order for us to be so afraid to let things

00:34:12.100 surrender back to the bigger process of life and death. So I know this is a bit esoteric,

00:34:18.320 but I'm just trying to get to the root of what has even led us here to begin with.

00:34:23.360 Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating. Two things come to mind. One is just that a few years ago,

00:34:28.800 after grad school, I kept trying to feed the idea and step-by-step the idea, get it somewhere.

00:34:34.240 But for a long time, it was very much a concept. Like for years, for six or seven years, it was just a concept. Now it exists, but it didn't for a long time. And so I would be talking about it and often getting press from just the fact of the idea, which, by the way, is fascinating if you think about that.

00:34:53.200 But then I remember this one email I got from someone who was like a tech guy who was working

00:35:01.960 on a mortality fix. So like, let's solve for mortality. And he was really, really mad. I'm

00:35:10.280 not sure really why he was bothering to get mad, but he was really mad that I was working on this

00:35:14.420 because it went against the idea of like fixing mortality, which is a very, very tech bro kind

00:35:20.660 of thing to tackle, but, um, which, and I feels related because I'm just like, I know none of us

00:35:27.080 want to lose anybody. And, and frankly, I am not, um, yet comfortable with the idea of my own

00:35:33.600 mortality. Full disclosure, I'm trying, but I haven't gotten there, but like, I also know that

00:35:38.240 I don't want to live forever. So it's interesting to me that people are trying to make it so you

00:35:43.540 could live forever. I think that's actually really beyond, and it feels related to not

00:35:49.100 wanting your buildings to fall down and not wanting your bodies to rot in the ground or to

00:35:53.620 decompose. I will say an interesting fact about the American funeral industry. So embalming is

00:36:01.360 practiced almost exclusively in the U.S. and Canada. The rest of the world doesn't practice

00:36:07.200 embalming in any great numbers. Maybe if someone needed to be transported to far distance, they

00:36:14.360 might think about using embalming as a process. The process of modern embalming was sort of

00:36:22.380 invented by a couple of people on the battlefield in the Civil War. And they found that they could

00:36:29.740 charge soldiers before battle. And if those soldiers died in battle, these enterprising

00:36:37.700 young people would embalm them. I think they used, it wasn't formaldehyde, but something similar.

00:36:43.100 They could embalm them and send them back to their families on the hot, hot train.

00:36:47.600 And then after that practice came up in the Civil War, when Lincoln died, he was embalmed and taken on, I think, a 16-city kind of final goodbye by train.

00:36:58.900 So all of these people saw this preserved presidential corpse.

00:37:03.460 And it's often talked about as a really good marketing – I don't mean to laugh, but it is sort of funny – like a really good marketing trip.

00:37:13.100 And so that's where modern embalming began.

00:37:15.640 And then as the funeral industry sort of saw that that was a great moneymaker, they also started implementing more and more licensure and schooling required for professionals to be able to do that procedure.

00:37:32.780 And so that's my understanding of where today's American funeral industry has come from.

00:37:38.120 Now, then in the 60s and 70s, cremation started to become a little more popular and the funeral industry by and large said like, no, we're not going to touch that because what we like to do is embalm people and sell people a fancy coffin and have a cemetery.

00:37:53.780 Cremation has risen very quickly over the last few decades, but it's been mostly consumer-driven.

00:38:00.640 The public has said, no, I don't want burial. It's too expensive. I'm not interested anymore

00:38:05.540 in having a plot in a specific cemetery. I'll take cremation. Thank you very much.

00:38:10.780 But that was interestingly, not exactly by design of the funeral industry, but came up

00:38:16.740 more from the public's interest. So today what we have in the US is actually cremation rates

00:38:22.380 somewhere, I think around 58%. In Seattle, 96% of people are cremated. And so I'd say like

00:38:30.800 conventional burial is kind of going away for most people. And cremation is what's left as the

00:38:37.120 other choice, definitely less expensive choice. People perceive it as more environmentally

00:38:42.520 friendly, which it isn't, but it has that perception for some reason. And so with human

00:38:47.700 composting, we often recognize that we're mostly talking to people who would otherwise choose

00:38:53.580 cremation when we're trying to say, well, look at this option, like consider being transported

00:38:58.440 into soil instead of ash.

00:39:17.700 Thank you.

00:39:47.700 Thank you.

00:40:17.700 Thank you.

00:40:47.700 to dive a bit more into the topic of soil yeah I guess I'm wondering about the ecological beauty

00:41:12.100 of this work and the ways our bodies can nourish the surroundings, which we kind of spoke to a bit

00:41:18.960 before this moment. And I would just love to hear more of your thoughts on this intimate connection

00:41:24.040 between death and life ecologically and how the soil created from our bodies can be kind of passed

00:41:32.160 forward into restoration or regeneration. Well, a couple of things. First of all,

00:41:38.980 I'll just describe this, what we're creating. As we transform bodies into soil and these vessels,

00:41:45.560 and then that soil goes through the curing phase, what results in the end, I've started to describe

00:41:53.460 a little like a very fine mulch or like a compost, like a rough compost. What is very cool about the

00:42:00.240 process is during composting, well, first of all, pharmaceuticals are broken down, pathogens are

00:42:06.360 broken down. And also DNA starts to break down. Molecules are being rearranged and atoms are

00:42:14.320 moving around and what results is no longer human. And I find that so beautiful. It is intense

00:42:22.900 that we could change from our human form to something else, but I find it only comforting

00:42:28.160 and beautiful. And so then as that soil is used on, let's say brought to a forest and placed in

00:42:34.700 the forest, it is taken up into trees and you get to literally become that forest. The birds eat the

00:42:43.160 berries on the tree and we're suddenly truly rejoining this very grand ecosystem, not just

00:42:51.040 figuratively, but actually truly and literally rejoining that system. I find that to be the

00:42:59.060 closest thing I guess I have to a religion. And so very comforting. I find it really interesting

00:43:05.080 about half of the families we work with decide to donate the soil. And so then it may go to that

00:43:11.820 forest. In fact, probably almost certainly will. And the other half come to recompose and pick the

00:43:19.260 soil up from our team. And what I love about that moment, number one, they get to meet the team

00:43:24.520 that's tended to their person's body for a matter of months and tended to the transformation.

00:43:30.960 And then also some of the stories of how people have used that soil are really stunning.

00:43:36.500 I think my favorite to date is still this person died and he'd been a gardener and he lived in

00:43:41.940 Seattle. And he died and his sister came and took all the soil back to his neighborhood in Seattle.

00:43:48.180 And all of his gardening friends came with five gallon buckets and got some of his soil and brought

00:43:54.280 it back to their gardens. And so it's not a majestic forest. It's a neighborhood garden and

00:43:59.580 another neighborhood garden and a parking strip. But there's something to me that's really lovely

00:44:05.040 about being folded back into that city that you loved as part of nature in the city.

00:44:11.700 Oh, yeah, I agree. And I'm just visualizing the community gardens and yards being fed. And I

00:44:20.420 I think it's so important, you know, as you started the conversation talking about urban spaces and communal spaces and, and of course, there's forest spaces too, but I appreciate how recompose looks at all the many ecosystems that are in need of attention and intention.

00:44:41.480 And yeah, I guess that's my next question that I've heard us both touch on, but the

00:44:48.100 importance of death rituals and the possibilities of creation.

00:44:52.600 There's an article called, Is Composting the Future of Death?

00:44:56.880 From The Takeaway, and you say, quote, it really is about creating more choice around

00:45:02.320 death care, giving as many options as possible.

00:45:05.500 We're certainly not saying that human composting is for everyone.

00:45:09.060 if you want to be cremated, you should have that option, I believe. If you want to have

00:45:13.420 embalming and a big fancy casket, by all means, you should have that as well. But for those of us

00:45:19.000 who are trying to align our death care with our life experience and some of the values we hold

00:45:24.000 dear, I think this is a really exciting option, end quote. And so I, yeah, just want to ask more

00:45:31.240 about what possibilities are there for creating new death rituals, for reconnecting with the

00:45:38.300 value of making and taking time around death, both for grief and for processing?

00:45:45.920 I think we started the conversation talking about inspiration. And I mentioned natural burial as a

00:45:53.120 huge inspiration for human composting and recompose. The other big inspiration for me

00:45:59.240 early on when I was researching alternative ways of approaching death, and there's beautiful work

00:46:05.720 by people being done to, you know, give folks back the experience of when someone dies.

00:46:14.460 Everyone can be a designer, maybe, or an expert in design. Everyone has the capacity and the

00:46:21.180 right to know death and to experience it fully. There are people who are trained as funeral

00:46:28.940 directors, some of whom are on our staff. There are people who are trained to do human composting,

00:46:34.020 and they are very, very good at what they do. And so, you know, they are the experts in many ways,

00:46:38.940 but each one of us has the capacity and again, really deserves the right to experience death

00:46:46.220 because it's such a critical, meaningful, and even beautiful piece of life. A great example of folks

00:46:53.080 working to make sure that people have that experience and that right are death doulas,

00:46:58.720 who are people that train in many parts of the end of life.

00:47:03.540 But one of the things a desk doula will train you to do is have a home funeral.

00:47:09.900 Home funerals are practiced all over the world today.

00:47:13.340 They've been practiced for millennia.

00:47:15.160 It's how we used to care for bodies is you would die

00:47:18.040 and our families would care for our bodies at home.

00:47:21.360 And until a professional industry came up, that was the way it was done.

00:47:25.640 And so home funerals today are a way to say, wow, there is a lot to be gained emotionally

00:47:34.080 by practicing that, by having a person's body at home after they've died.

00:47:41.660 When my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law died separately a few years apart, after each

00:47:48.660 of their deaths, we had their bodies at home for a number of days, in fact.

00:47:54.640 which is perfectly legal and perfectly doable, but so many of us don't know that's possible.

00:48:00.800 I happen to be part of a family on my girlfriend's side that knows it's possible and sees the beauty

00:48:06.680 and value in doing it. And so some of that early experience I had in sitting with these people who

00:48:13.540 I love, their bodies there, sitting with them, watching my kids sit and interact with those

00:48:20.200 people's bodies. That really informed Recompose today and how we want to consider the families

00:48:29.500 and the experience of those families and to provide them with every opportunity

00:48:36.180 and encouragement to be part of the death care process. So what that looks like,

00:48:43.260 here's a couple of ways that we sort of show up for that idea. One is we work with a transport

00:48:52.020 team that goes to the place of death and picks up the body and brings it to us at our facility in

00:48:58.020 Seattle. And that's not uncommon, but the transport team we work at is really, really a lovely group

00:49:05.340 of people. And they're thoughtful when they pick up the person's body and they'll talk to the family

00:49:10.380 about, you know, would you like to help me load your loved one into the minivan? Do you have

00:49:16.280 music that you'd like me to play on the way to Recompose that your person loved? Those like

00:49:23.900 really small, intentional actions can have a huge impact on the person. At Recompose, we have a room

00:49:32.780 we've designed called Cedar, and we've designed it as a place for families to have a small gathering,

00:49:39.940 like four people, six people, be with the person's body and then do whatever feels right to them to

00:49:47.540 design that death care time themselves. So we have running water. It's beautifully designed

00:49:55.660 space. The chairs, we thought so much about the chairs and how they would really hold you and

00:50:00.580 support you. You might play music. You might brush your person's hair. You might do your person's

00:50:08.340 nails, you might simply sit in silence, you might do ritual washing or prayer. And all of that is

00:50:15.140 really there for the design, again, by the family and close friends. And our team is so there for

00:50:23.540 like helping that family and friends, if they want help in designing those moments.

00:50:30.140 It's not a blank slate, because actually, it's really hard to design from a blank slate.

00:50:34.820 But it's also not prescribed what you would do in that room.

00:50:40.220 That sounds really beautiful and grateful that you give people that space to find their meaning and their moment with their people.

00:50:51.880 I could see how powerful that could be.

00:50:54.180 And there was an interview with Madam Architect, and you say, quote, natural burial is almost a perfect system. A body is placed in the ground with a simple shroud or maybe in a pine box, and then nature takes over. But of course, this takes time to do so. It takes land to bury someone. And in cities, we don't have that land to allow for that regenerative process, end quote.

00:51:17.760 And of course, you touched on this at the beginning of our conversation, but I think it's, you know, it's so important to maybe give a little more attention to in this conversation.

00:51:28.580 And I am wondering how you see your role in the development of this practice and recognize that people have been taking a compost approach to death for thousands of years while, you know, of course, also thinking specifically about the very material design for our future because we have a really large population.

00:51:48.880 And, you know, there's definitely, I don't know if it's a design problem to consider, but if you could share more details of how you're thinking through the future of death.

00:52:02.160 I'm pretty focused on providing the option of human composting where people want it, which is a big endeavor, right?

00:52:13.880 So the first six years of this work was sort of a proof of concept. Would it really work? What needs to happen to make it available? And that included legalization and that included piloting it and all of those things.

00:52:29.560 And then the second, maybe four years of it has been, let's create the place and the system and start doing it. So my main goal now is to make sure that human composting is available anywhere it's wanted with a focus, as you point out, on urban centers.

00:52:48.580 because if natural burial is a beautiful idea and we should have more of it but it takes land

00:52:55.060 it's a great option for rural settings so if human composting is focused on urban settings

00:53:01.080 that to me makes a lot of sense because it's a process that you know uses a vessel that then

00:53:06.540 gets reused in a matter of about a month and can be more scalable as a system than something like

00:53:13.080 burial. So my goal now is to bring, recompose anywhere it's wanted. Our team has a new 30 year

00:53:22.980 goal, I would say, which is that we want human composting to be the most popular form of death

00:53:29.520 care to surpass cremation. And if we did that, there'd be huge benefits carbon wise, soil health

00:53:37.460 wise. I think emotionally and spiritually as humans, that would have a huge impact knowing

00:53:44.360 we're returning to the earth. But 30 years might be a little short, actually. It's a long process

00:53:49.320 to get to that place. But that's our new goal is to surpass cremation as the leading form of death

00:53:55.040 care. Oh, wow. Thank you for taking us so many places with this conversation. And if there's

00:54:05.060 anything that you would like to close with, I'd love to just invite you to say whatever is on your

00:54:11.900 mind. I think the beautiful thing about changing the death care landscape is that every conversation

00:54:20.340 you have with someone who hasn't considered this before is really quite exciting and groundbreaking

00:54:27.000 and is totally building the movement and changing the way we're doing death and funeral care today.

00:54:35.760 So go have that conversation over dinner.

00:54:39.320 It can be quite hard to have those conversations, and yet there's a beauty and a groundedness in having them.

00:54:45.220 And weirdly, it can be a lot of fun to start having these conversations, how you want the end of life to go,

00:54:50.740 what you want done with your body. And I promise you, you can turn some heads at the dinner table

00:54:57.520 if you bring this up. So I encourage folks out there to go talk to everybody about it.

00:55:03.760 Come to our website and learn more about what we do and sign up for our newsletter list and

00:55:08.360 sign up to learn on social and spread the word. That's a huge thing. So thank you.

00:55:13.920 Wonderful. Thank you so much, Katrina, for your time and your attention and intention. I really

00:55:21.800 appreciated this conversation. Thank you. I did too.

00:55:34.020 Thanks for listening to For the Wild. The music you heard today is by Yes All.

00:55:38.360 For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, Jackson Krupp, and Evan Tenenbaum.

For The Wild - August 30, 2023

KATRINA SPADE on New Life from Death ⧸346

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