Aquamation and human composting are two of the most significant innovations in human disposition to emerge in recent decades. Both methods offer alternatives to conventional burial and cremation that are substantially lower in environmental impact, lower in cost (particularly human composting), and increasingly available to the general public as legal and regulatory barriers gradually recede. Together, they represent the leading edge of a broader reconceptualization of what happens to human remains — a reconceptualization that is as much cultural and philosophical as it is technical.
Aquamation — also known as alkaline hydrolysis, water cremation, or resomation — is a process that uses a solution of water and alkali (typically potassium hydroxide) at elevated temperature and pressure to accelerate the natural process of decomposition that would occur in a moist soil environment. The result, achieved in a few hours rather than years, is a set of bone fragments (as in flame cremation) and a sterile liquid effluent that can be safely released into wastewater systems or used as a soil amendment. The bone fragments can be processed and returned to the family as "cremains," as with conventional flame cremation. The process uses approximately one-seventh the energy of flame cremation, produces no direct greenhouse gas emissions, and uses no flame — making it inherently lower in carbon footprint and air quality impact than conventional cremation.
The technology has been in use for human remains since the early 2000s in North America and Europe, though it was first developed for veterinary and research purposes. Legalization in the United States has proceeded state by state: as of 2025, more than thirty states have legalized aquamation for human use, with several more in various stages of legislative consideration. Resistance has come from three primary sources: religious communities with theological concerns about the use of water and chemical dissolution rather than earth or fire; conventional cremation industry incumbents who face direct competition; and legislators with general discomfort with novel disposition methods. The religious objections are the most substantive, and they reflect genuine theological traditions — Catholic canon law has historically required burial or flame cremation, though some Catholic theologians have argued that aquamation is theologically equivalent. Jewish and Islamic scholars are similarly divided.
Human composting — also termed natural organic reduction (NOR) or terramation — is a more recent innovation, pioneered commercially by Recompose, a company founded by Katrina Spade that opened for business in Washington State in 2020, following that state's 2019 legalization. The process places the body in a vessel with organic material (wood chips, alfalfa, straw) that provides the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio and aeration needed for aerobic microbial decomposition. Over approximately thirty days, the body — bones included — is converted into roughly one cubic yard of rich, pathogen-free compost. This material can be returned to the family for use in their gardens, donated to conservation land, or retained by the provider. The nutrient content of the resulting soil is substantial: a single human body produces enough compost to nourish a small garden meaningfully.
The environmental case for both methods is compelling. Conventional flame cremation releases approximately 540 pounds of carbon dioxide per cremation, plus significant quantities of other pollutants including dioxins, furans, and mercury from dental amalgam. Aquamation's carbon footprint is a fraction of this. Human composting goes further: it sequesters carbon in the soil rather than releasing it into the atmosphere, making it the only common disposition method that is genuinely carbon-positive. The contrast with conventional burial is equally stark: the conventional burial of roughly 2.5 million Americans per year consumes an estimated 77,000 trees, 1.6 million tons of concrete, and 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid annually. Alternative methods that bypass or reduce these requirements offer significant collective environmental benefits if adopted at scale.
At the collective scale, the policy questions around aquamation and human composting are about more than legalization. They include: how should regulatory frameworks handle novel disposition methods that don't fit existing categories? How can states balance legitimate public health concerns with consumer access to alternatives that existing evidence suggests are safe? How should cultural and religious diversity be respected in death care regulation — particularly when some communities' objections to novel methods could effectively restrict access for others? And how do equitable access considerations interact with the current geography of availability, which is heavily concentrated in progressive coastal states?
The deeper question these methods raise is about collective identity and ecological membership. Human composting in particular makes explicit a claim that is implicit in green burial: that human remains are not waste to be managed but organic matter to be returned to living cycles. The language used by Recompose and its advocates is deliberately vitalist — the process is described as a "transformation," the compost as a "gift to the earth." This framing positions human death as participation in ecological continuity rather than exit from it. Whether this framing is persuasive depends on prior beliefs about the nature of the self, the afterlife, and the relationship between human beings and the material world — which is why these methods are contested not just technically but philosophically.
For stewardship ethics, both aquamation and human composting represent genuine advances: they reduce environmental harm, lower costs, increase consumer options, and — in the case of human composting — actively contribute to soil health. They embody a planning orientation toward death that takes seriously the long-term ecological consequences of the choices societies make about disposition, and they challenge existing institutional arrangements in ways that require collective deliberation rather than individual choice alone.