Emily recalled her dad as energetic, extremely kind, and a mischievous practical joker. He was also an early adopter of new technologies, she said.
“He bought an electric car before there were chargers,” Emily said. “He bought an electric car so early that the company actually went out of business.”
Due to the sensitive nature of this story, we are not sharing their full names.
His wife, Julie, sat beside their daughter while she admired how he planned not one but two successful surprise parties for her 40th and 60th birthdays. She said he believed everything could be used for something — just like the leaves in their yard.
“He thought I was throwing them out, but in reality, I was sending them to the city to be recycled. So I said, ‘It’s okay, I will show you their pile of leaves.’ He saw that everything that grows around us is a resource, and it’s valuable, and was basically created with the energy of the sun, and that this is something that shouldn't be squandered, and the sun is free,” Julie said.
When her husband died unexpectedly a couple of years ago, and without advance funeral preparations, Julie didn’t know where to turn. She leaned on her daughter, who learned about a brand-new company at the time, Earth Funeral in Las Vegas.
“It felt like just the most harmonious combination between like a very clean modern process and also a tradition that’s as old as our species, where we surround our loved ones in flowers and return them to the earth,” Emily said.
The two thought composting aligned perfectly with his principles.
“To know that he is still in the sunlight, still contributing to the environment, makes us feel literally like he’s still alive,” Julie said.
He was incorporated into a river ecosystem restoration project along the San Joaquin River in Central California. This site is no longer an option after local leaders objected.
But Julie said it still matches her husband’s pro-startup personality.
“He fully believed in supporting startups and in getting initiatives off the ground,” Julie said. “He was such an adventurer that had he been selected for the astronaut program to go to Mars and be put in a tiny tin can for a number of weeks to get there, I knew from the time I first married him that I would have to say, ‘Yes, go with my blessing,’ because that’s how much he believed in innovation.”
How does human composting work?
The result is similar to composting coffee grounds or banana peels. There’s no DNA present by the end of the process, said Rho Hudson, the family services specialist at Earth Funeral, which opened its second facility in Las Vegas in 2024 with 41 composting vessels, following its first in Washington. The 2023 Nevada law authorized the “natural organic reduction for the cremation of human remains.”
While providing a tour, Hudson showed a seven-foot-long green pod that looks like a tanning bed in the lobby.
“Some people say it looks like an iron lung, I’ve also had people say it looks like something that you’d find in a ship or a submarine,” Hudson said. “It reminds me of when you would go to the bank, those little cylinders that they’d send down.”
Before being placed in the tube, the body is gently washed and wrapped in a shroud along with woodchips, mulch, and wildflowers, which provide carbon, Hudson said. The inside slowly rotates and controls the temperature, moisture, and oxygen flow to create the perfect conditions for decomposition as the microbes from the gut break down the body, which releases nitrogen, over 30 to 45 days.
“Sometimes you can hear faint rumbling, and that’s the wood chips moving inside the vessel. It does oscillate pretty slowly, but if you do composting at home, you have to churn it yourself. The same idea is happening,” Hudson said.
At the end, there’s roughly 300 pounds, or about double your body weight, of nutrient-rich soil. Family members can receive a biodegradable urn to plant at home. The rest can be sent to Earth Funeral’s current reforestation site, a five-acre historically overlogged area on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.
The human composting process is an environmental alternative to cremation, which emits carbon and mercury, while the traditional burial and embalming process can pollute soil and underground water.
“It’s a gentle, natural process that returns you to nature,” said Tom Harries, co-founder and CEO of Earth Funeral.
Earth Funeral, including transportation of the deceased from anywhere in the world, costs around $5,000. That price tag can be slightly more expensive than cremation, but significantly less than traditional burial in the U.S., which can cost more than $10,000.
Hudson said many people she works with are interested in preplanning and prepaying after having some kind of encounter with death.
“Some people have had the experience where their family that has passed did not prepay and preplan, and they’re like it was such a stressful time for me. We’ve also had people that have had the opposite, where their family did prepay, and they’re like it was just like such a burden and a weight off of my shoulders, where I could actually spend the time grieving and figuring out what type of celebration of life would service my loved one who’s passed,” Hudson said.
Eco-friendly funerals appeal to pre-planners
Green burials are growing in popularity, said Anita Hannig, a cultural anthropologist, death educator, and author of “The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America.” This includes being wrapped in a mushroom-growing cloak or water cremation.
“When people are increasingly looking to leave some sort of legacy or used to expressing themselves throughout their lives, there’s an idea that they want to be aligned with their values when they die, of wanting to personalize your departure, and less stymied by convention and weighed down by traditions that you might not even have any connection to that have just been passed down unquestioningly. Why not press my ashes into a vinyl record, or why not be put into a tree root? It’s part of our consumer culture in some ways,” Hannig said.
Acknowledging your mortality and organizing the details of your own funeral is a brave and personal choice, Hannig said.
“I think it’s brave to say, I know I’m going to die, and this is what I want, and I want to take this decision off your shoulders, and you need to call this number, and this is how we’re going to do it. I think facing that in a society that just faces away from death is brave. Our culture doesn’t make it easy to talk about death,” Hannig said.
Reno residents Jo Ellen and Ron Keil first met at the Forestry Club at the University of Nevada, Reno. Ron was impressed at Jo Ellen’s handling of a chainsaw, and she said he had a good pair of boots on. The couple, celebrating their 50th anniversary next year, prepaid for their services with Earth Funeral. They said their decision is a gift for their family.
The two had put some thought into what their soil would be used for.
“I'd like to be an oak, a majestic oak,” Jo Ellen said.
The two sat under a shady park bench as a ladybug flew between them as they spoke.
“I would like there to be an opportunity for a tree or two to be planted in some place where our sons and their family might enjoy it, and give you an occasional thought as they prune the sucker,” Ron said.
Both are retired U.S. Forest Service employees. Jo Ellen said they have renewable natural resources “in their blood.”
“Being in a restoration area feels like a good ending or new beginning,” Jo Ellen said.
Ron joked that being buried is good for carbon sequestration.
“I feel like getting quickly back into the ecosystem is how you recycle yourself,” Ron said.
