08/17/2025
PSA 📢
Green Burial ≠ Indoor Human Composting
⠀
It’s easy to confuse them, especially when slick marketing blurs the line, but let’s be clear: these practices are fundamentally different. Let me help!
Green burial (also called natural burial) is the traditional, eco‑friendly way of laying someone to rest:
No embalming chemicals.
No metal caskets or concrete vaults.
The body returns naturally to the soil in a biodegradable shroud or container in the ground.
In contrast, human composting (technically natural organic reduction, or NOR) is an industrialized, accelerated process:
The body is placed in a closed vessel INDOORS with organic materials like wood chips and alfalfa
Oxygen, moisture, and microbial activity are controlled to speed decomposition, producing usable mulch in about 30 days.
Some companies use terms like “green,” “natural,” or “compost” to describe these services in ways that make them seem interchangeable, often more about marketing than transparency. This greenwashing, intentional or not, can mislead families into thinking they’re choosing the same thing.
** What you can do:**
Try searching online for “green burial” in your area. If the first results lean are from a composting company, those are the listings and businesses you’ll want to approach with caution, IMO.
Despite what they tell you, green burial is not the same as human composting.
Both might aim to reduce harm to the earth. But one is grounded, rooted in natural soil decomposition; the other is technological, accelerated, and contained.
Educating yourself (and others) helps counteract misleading narratives, and fosters genuine, transparent choices in end-of-life care.
The images in the collage are not mine and used under Fair Use for educational commentary and critique.
