Dying isn't always an Earth-friendly business.

Decomposing bodies in coffins buried in the ground can emit large amounts of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas.

That, along with the formaldehyde that's used to get the body preserved for burial makes for not-so-sustainable burial practices.

And while the vast majority of people opt for either traditional burial or cremation, there are other ways to be memorialized that do less damage to the planet.

1. Turn your body into a tree

Developed by Italian designers, this sustainable burial practice will turn your remains into tree food. Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel, the creators of Capsula Mundi (pictured here) want to change the way Italy buries its loved ones with their pod-like design using eco-friendly materials.

You're buried inside a biodegradable egg-shaped pod while in the fetal position. When you're buried, a tree gets planted on top. Then the idea is that as the pod begins to decompose, the body can turn into minerals that feed the tree. Bretzel and Mundi hope to change the traditional cemetery into a "sacred forest."

2. Use dry ice 

Traditionally, families burying their loved ones will have them embalmed, so that the decomposing process doesn't start right away. Usually, this is done with formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen (which, of course doesn't affect those being embalmed, but rather those doing the embalming).

Instead, some people are turning to dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) as a way to keep bodies preserved until they are interred. This keeps the body from decomposing without needing embalming, though you do have to change out the ice every day. Though carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the amount released from the dry ice used in body preservation is a pretty small percentage of overall CO2 emissions.

3. Furnish your home with a shelf that doubles as a coffin

Instead of using your wooden coffin only as your final resting place, William Warren had the idea of making a set of shelves that can be converted to a coffin when the time is right. This upcycled version makes the wood useful for longer, and as Warren remarks on his website, "the wood will colour, the surfaces will mark and stain and over the years and the furniture will become a part of you." Warren designed the shelves and debuted them at the 2005 London Design Festival, though you can ask him for directions on how to may your own set of shelves-turned-coffin.

Plus, you get the added fun of telling all your guests about it while giving them a tour of your house and seeing their bewildered expressions.

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Texas became the latest state Mondayto implement a controversial new rule requiring fetal remains be buried or cremated, rather than disposed of as medical waste, which reproductive rights advocates say imposes an unnecessary restriction and cost on abortion providers.

The measure is set to go into effect December 19 and requires all hospitals, medical facilities, and abortion providers to dispose of fetal remains through cremation or burial, rather than in a sanitary landfill, regardless of the length of the gestation period, reported the Texas Tribune.

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• Alkaline hydrolysis liquefies the body using water and lye. 
• It's considered a "greener" approach to burial than cremation.
• While it hasn't caught on widely yet, some consider it the burial method of the future. 

When it comes to putting loved ones in their final resting places, our choice has long been whether to bury a body or cremate it. 

But a third option has been gaining attention recently: Alkaline hydrolysis, which involves dissolving a body in a liquid solution. The process leaves behind bones that can be ground into ash using much less energy than cremation.

Though it sounds a bit gruesome, the approach offers many benefits.

"This by far is the most environmentally friendly choice" Dean Fisher, director of the Donated Body Program at UCLA told Wired.

While alkaline hydrolysis has been used by some medical schools, it's not something you'll find at most funeral homes. It's more commonly used to dispose of animals, though some places, like the Anderson-McQueen funeral home in St. Petersburg, Florida are doing it commercially.  

How alkaline hydrolysis works

The process begins with a cadaver and ends with liquid and bones, which are then ground into ash.

The body is placed into a sealed chamber that's then filled with a solution of potassium hydroxide, also known as lye, and water. The chamber is heated to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and the potassium hydroxide gets moved around for a few hours to dissolve the body.

"What we're doing is we're actually taking the natural process of decomposition and we're speeding that up," Fisher told Wired. "What happens is that it dissolves the body over the course of a three to four hour timeframe, and then the fluid goes over to the accumulation tank." Bones and any prosthetics the person may have had remain on the tray when the chamber is opened back up.  

The Associated Press has described the liquid result as a "brownish, syrupy residue." After it's drained, the bones are dried out and ground down into calcium phosphate ash. Because the bodies have been donated to science in Fisher's facility, the department scatters the ash into the ocean. When the process is done commercially, the ashes can be returned to the family. 

A replacement for cremation?

Having a body cremated may seem like a sustainable burial, but in most cases it's not great for the environment. In cremation, everything is burned into ash, including bone and medical implants. That can lead to the release of harmful pollutants. In the UK, for instance, cremation contributes to 16% of all mercury pollution. And as The Atlantic has reported, cremation takes about two SUV-tanks worth of gas to cremate a single body. Alkaline hydrolysis, on the other hand, requires only an eighth of that energy, Gizmodo reports.

A traditional burial can affect the environment as well, since embalming chemicals can leach into the ground where a person is buried. Alkaline hydrolysis doesn't require such chemicals, however. Places that do it commercially have also said the process isn't more expensive than cremation, NPR reported in 2011. 

There have been legal roadblocks that have kept alkaline hydrolysis from catching on, though. According to Wired, only 14 states have legalized the process, and there are often concerns from environmental protection agencies that the liquid disposal could leach toxins into environment. 

Nonetheless, alkaline hydrolysis offers new, greener, alternative to burial practices that haven't changed in centuries.

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• Most Americans have previously accepted a limited set of options for their burial, but that's changing.
• Americans are becoming more willing to embrace new funeral and burial practices.
• Laws are changing to allow a growing variety of practices.

What do you want to happen to your remains after you die?

For the past century, most Americans have accepted a limited set of options without question. And discussions of death and funeral plans have been taboo.

That is changing. As a scholar of funeral and cemetery law, I’ve discovered that Americans are becoming more willing to have a conversation about their own mortality and what comes next and embrace new funeral and burial practices.

Baby boomers are insisting upon more control over their funeral and disposition so that their choices after death match their values in life. And businesses are following suit, offering new ways to memorialize and dispose of the dead.

While some options such as Tibetan sky burial– leaving human remains to be picked clean by vultures – and “Viking” burial via flaming boat– familiar to “Game of Thrones” fans – remain off limits in the U.S., laws are changing to allow a growing variety of practices.

'The American Way of Death'

In 1963, English journalist and activist Jessica Mitford published “The American Way of Death,” in which she described the leading method of disposing of human remains in the United States, still in use today.

She wrote that human remains are temporarily preserved by replacing blood with a formaldehyde-based embalming fluid shortly after death, placed in a decorative wood or metal casket, displayed to family and friends at the funeral home and buried within a concrete or steel vault in a grave, perpetually dedicated and marked with a tombstone.

Mitford called this “absolutely weird” and argued that it had been invented by the American funeral industry, which emerged at the turn of the 20th century. As she wrote in The Atlantic:

“Foreigners are astonished to learn that almost all Americans are embalmed and publicly displayed after death. The practice is unheard of outside the United States and Canada.”

Nearly all Americans who died from the 1930s, when embalming became well-established, through the 1990s were disposed of in this manner.

And it’s neither cheap or good for the environment. The median cost of a funeral and burial, including a vault to enclose the casket, was $8,508 in 2014. Including the cost of the burial plot, the fee for opening and closing the grave and the tombstone easily brings the total cost to $11,000 or more.

This method also consumes a great deal of natural resources. Each year, we bury 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluid, 115 million tons of steel, 2.3 billion tons of concrete and enough wood to build 4.6 million single-family homes.

Mitford’s book influenced generations of Americans, beginning with the baby boomers, to question this type of funeral and burial. As a result, demand for alternatives such as home funerals and green burials have increased significantly. The most common reasons cited are a desire to connect with and honor their loved ones in a more meaningful way, and interest in lower-cost, less environmentally damaging choices.

The rise of cremation

The most radical change to how Americans handle their remains has been the rising popularity of cremation by fire.

Cremation is less expensive than burial and, although it consumes fossil fuels, is widely perceived to be better for the environment than burial in a casket and vault.

Although cremation became legal in a handful of states in the 1870s and 1880s, its usage in the U.S. remained in single digits for another century.

After steadily rising since the 1980s, cremation was the disposition method of choice for nearly half of all deaths in the U.S. in 2015. Cremation is most popular in urban areas, where the cost of burial can be quite high, in states with a lot of people born in other ones and among those who do not identify with a particular religious faith.

Residents of western states like Nevada, Washington and Oregon opt for cremation the most, with rates as high as 76 percent. Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky have the lowest rates, at less than a quarter of all burials. The National Funeral Directors Association projects that by 2030 the nationwide cremation rate will reach 71 percent.

Cremation’s dramatic rise is part of a huge shift in American funerary practices away from burial and the ritual of embalming the dead, which is not required by law in any state but which most funeral homes require in order to have a visitation. In 2017, a survey of the personal preferences of Americans aged 40 and over found that more than half preferred cremation. Only 14 percent of those respondents said they would like to have a full funeral service with viewing and visitation prior to cremation, down from 27 percent as recently as 2015.

Part of the reason for that shift is cost. In 2014, the median cost of a funeral with viewing and cremation was $6,078. In contrast, a “direct cremation,” which does not include embalming or a viewing, can typically be purchased for $700 to $1,200.

Cremated remains can be buried in a cemetery or stored in an urn on the mantle, but businesses also offer a bewildering range of options for incorporating ashes into objects like glass paperweights, jewelry and even vinyl records.

And while 40 percent of respondents to the 2017 survey associate a cremation with a memorial service, Americans are increasingly holding those services at religious institutions and nontraditional locations like parks, museums and even at home.

Going green

Another trend is finding greener alternatives to both the traditional burial and cremation.

The 2017 survey found that 54 percent of respondents were interested in green options. Compare this with a 2007 survey of those aged 50 or higher by AARP which found that only 21 percent were interested in a more environmentally friendly burial.

One example of this is a new method of disposing of human remains called alkaline hydrolysis, which involves using water and a salt-based solution to dissolve human remains.

Often referred as “water cremation,” it’s preferred by many as a greener alternative to cremation by fire, which consumes fossil fuels. Most funeral homes that offer both methods of cremation charge the same price.

The alkaline hydrolysis process results in a sterile liquid and bone fragments that are reduced to “ash” and returned to the family. Although most Americans are unfamiliar with the process, funeral directors that have adopted it generally report that families prefer it to cremation by fire. California recently became the 15th state to legalize it.

Going home

A rising number of families are also interested in so-called “home funerals,” in which the remains are cleaned and prepared for disposition at home by the family, religious community or friends.

Home funerals are followed by cremation, or burial in a family cemetery, a traditional cemetery or a green cemetery.

Assisted by funeral directors or educated by home funeral guides, families that choose home funerals are returning to a set of practices that predate the modern funeral industry.

Proponents say that caring for remains at home is a better way of honoring the relationship between the living and the dead. Home funerals are also seen as more environmentally friendly since remains are temporarily preserved through the use of dry ice rather than formaldehyde-based embalming fluid.

The Green Burial Council says rejecting embalming is one way to go green. Another is to choose to have remains interred or cremated in a fabric shroud or biodegradable casket rather than a casket made from nonsustainable hardwoods or metal. The council promotes standards for green funeral products and certifies green funeral homes and burial grounds. More than 300 providers are currently certified in 41 states and six Canadian provinces.

For example, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the historic New York cemetery made famous by Washington Irving, is a certified “hybrid” cemetery because it has reserved a portion of its grounds for green burials: no embalming, no vaults and no caskets unless they are biodegradable – the body often goes straight into the ground with just a simple wrapping.

Clearly Americans are pushing the “traditional” boundaries of how to memorialize their loved ones and dispose of their remains. While I wouldn’t hold out hope that Americans will be able to choose Viking- or Tibetan-style burials anytime soon, you never know.

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• 50 years ago, the bones of a child were discovered in a shallow grave in a cave in Poland.
• Researchers are perplexed about why the child was buried in the cave, as well as why it was found with the skull of a chaffinch in its mouth.
• Stranger still, the child's skull has since gone missing.

Coming across human remains buried in odd circumstances is, to some extent, part of an anthropologist's job description — and usually they're able to suss out the reason why the remains are buried the way they are.

However, a skeleton in Poland has created a bit of a conundrum.

Found in Tunel Wielki Cave, Sąspowska Valley, Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, the bones of a child buried in a shallow grave are thought to have been buried there roughly two centuries ago.

The unusual thing is that the only other human bones in the cave were over four millennia old, which suggests it wasn't a spot regularly used for burials at the time the child died.

According to researchers at the Institute of Archaeology in Warsaw, it's the only discovery of a modern human skeleton in a cave in this region — and the plot thickened further from there.

The archaeologists also found the skull of a chaffinch bird in the child's mouth as well as another beside its cheek. They're currently struggling to get their heads around why the skulls were buried with the child's remains.

Technically, the skeleton isn't fresh; the bones were actually discovered around 50 years ago when the caves were excavated.

However, almost immediately, the remains were placed in storage without ever having been assessed and examined properly.

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"When we opened another dusty box from an old research project, we found small child's bones," said archaeologist Małgorzata Kot from the University of Warsaw in a report by Science in Poland, "their discoverer, professor Waldemar Chmielewski, never published the details of this find, he only included a photograph of it in a book published in the 1980s."

"This practice is not known among the ethnologists we have asked for opinions," said Kot, "it remains a mystery why the child was buried in a cave in this way, not in a cemetery in a nearby village."

Unfortunately, there's now a serious problem for the team in terms of finding out what happened to the child — the skull was sent over to anthropologists in Wrocław straight after excavation and has gone missing.

"Unfortunately, the child's skull is not in the possession of the University of Warsaw, but after the excavations it fell directly into the hands of anthropologists in Wrocław," said Kot.

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That said, analysis recently carried out on what was left of the child's remains is promising and may provide more clues about the bizarre find.

Radiocarbon dating shows the child is about ten years old and was buried very close to the surface in one of the cave's two chambers — and the results also suggest that the child suffered from malnutrition.

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• Three urns filled with human ash washed up on Dutch beaches in Katwijk and Noordwijk over the last week. 
• The urns had fallen overboard a ship from the Dutch shipping company Trip Scheepvaart, after a box containing them "slipped from an employee’s hands over the railing."
• The urns came from a German crematorium in the town of Greifswald in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern which is 470 miles from the beaches.
• They were found by separately by a 14-year-old boy, a fisherman, and a woman, and were later returned to the company. 

Three urns filled with human ash washed up on Dutch beaches this week in what a shipping company has called a "very unfortunate accident."

The urns were found over the past six days by a 14-year-old boy, a fisherman, and a woman, on beaches in Katwijk and Noordwijk, according to RTL News.

The urns had fallen overboard a ship from the Dutch shipping company Trip Scheepvaart, of Scheveningen in The Hague, The Guardian reported.

All of the urns came from the same German crematorium in the town of Greifswald in the northern Germany state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which is 470 miles (750km) away from the beaches.

The three urns' aluminum lids were marked with the dates of birth, death, and cremation of the person who died, and marked "For collection" by the crematorium.

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Shipping company Trip Scheepvaart said on Wednesday that the urns fell overboard when a box containing them "slipped from an employee’s hands over the railing."

The urns were being shipped for a mass funeral at sea.

A spokeswoman for the company, Silvia Roos, told Germany’s DPA agency that Trip Scheepvaart had buried contents of two of the three urns at sea, and the third would soon be buried.

A spokesman for the Stralsund public prosecutor's office, which covers Greifswald, is investigating the incident to see if any crimes were committed in the incident, according to the German news site Ostzee-Zeitung. 

• Read more about burials:
• Americans are embracing new, inventive ways to dispose of their bodies after they die
• People have started dissolving loved ones' dead bodies as a greener alternative to burying or cremating them

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• Washington's state legislature passed a bill legalizing a burial alternative known as "natural organic reduction," which turns bodies into soil within weeks. 
• If Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signs the bill, Washington would become the first state to allow such a process. 
• Inslee spokeswoman Jaime Smith said the bill "seems like a thoughtful effort to soften our footprint" on the Earth.
• Visit INSIDER's homepage for more stories.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Washington appears set to become the first state to allow a burial alternative known as "natural organic reduction"— an accelerated decomposition process that turns bodies into soil within weeks.

The bill legalizing the process, sometimes referred to as "human composting," has passed the Legislature and is headed to the desk of Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee.

If signed by Inslee, the new law would take effect May 1, 2020. Inslee spokeswoman Jaime Smith said that while the governor's office is still reviewing the bill, "this seems like a thoughtful effort to soften our footprint" on the Earth.

The measure's sponsor, Democratic Sen. Jamie Pedersen of Seattle, said that the low environmental impact way to dispose of remains makes sense, especially in crowded urban areas.

The natural organic reduction process yields a cubic yard (0.76 cubic meters) of soil per body — enough to fill about two large wheelbarrows.

Remains can be put into urns, used to plant trees, or spread on public land. 

Pedersen said that the same laws that apply to scattered cremated remains apply to the soil: Relatives can keep the soil in urns, use it to plant a tree on private property or spread it on public land in the state as long as they comply with existing permissions regarding remains.

"It is sort of astonishing that you have this completely universal human experience — we're all going to die — and here's an area where technology has done nothing for us. We have the two means of disposing of human bodies that we've had for thousands of years, burying and burning," Pedersen said. "It just seems like an area that is ripe for having technology help give us some better options than we have used."

Pedersen said an entrepreneurial constituent whose study of the process became her master's thesis brought the idea to him.

It is modeled after the practice farmers use to dispose of livestock.

Katrina Spade, the founder and CEO of Recompose , was a graduate student in architecture at University of Massachusetts Amherst when she came up with the idea — modeling it on a practice farmers have used for decades to dispose of livestock.

She modified that process a bit, and found that the use of wood chips, alfalfa and straw creates a mixture of nitrogen and carbon that accelerates natural decomposition when a body is placed in a temperature and moisture-controlled vessel and rotated.

Six human bodies — all donors who Spade said wanted to be part of this study — were reduced to soil during a pilot project at Washington State University last year. The transformation from body to soil took between four and seven weeks, Spade said.

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A price for the service hasn't yet been set, but the Recompose website states that the company's "goal is to build a sustainable business to make recomposition a permanent death care option, serve people for decades to come, and make our services available to all who want them."

According to the Cremation Association of North America, Washington state's cremation rate is the highest in the nation. More than 78 percent of those who died in the state in 2017 were cremated, and that number is expected to increase to more than 82 percent in 2022.

Rob Goff, executive director of the Washington State Funeral Directors Association, said his group has been getting questions about the new process, and Spade has been a speaker at a series of recent district meetings of the association.

"To be able to provide more options for people's choices is a very exciting thing," he said.

The process is environmentally friendly and "as aligned with the natural cycle as possible."

Spade said that she doesn't want to replace cremation or burial, but instead offer a meaningful alternative that is also environmentally friendly.

"Our goal is to provide something that is as aligned with the natural cycle as possible, but still realistic in being able to serve a good number of families and not take up as much land as burial will," she said.

Pedersen said he thinks he may still want a marker in a cemetery when he dies, but said he is drawn to the idea of his body taking up less space with a process like natural organic reduction.

"I think it's really a lovely way of exiting the earth," he said.

Pederson's bill also would authorize in Washington state the use of alkaline hydrolysis — already used in 19 other states — which uses heat, pressure, water, and chemicals like lye to reduce remains to components of liquid and bone similar to cremated ashes that can be kept in urns or interred.

• Read more:
• Americans are embracing new, inventive ways to dispose of their bodies after they die
• Scientists can't figure out why a child's skeleton was found buried in a cave with a bird's skull in its mouth
• Urns filled with human ash washed up on Dutch beaches after falling off a shipping boat

Join the conversation about this story »

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• British archaeologists discovered the tomb of an Anglo-Saxon in the countryside outside of London.
• The 1,400-year-old tomb contained myriad artifacts, including weapons, a lyre, gold coins, and drinking horns, suggesting the person buried there was a member of the royal class and a warrior.
• The director of research at the Museum of London Archaeology suggested that the finding — which could be the oldest burial site of a Christian royal in the country — was the "British equivalent to Tutankhamun's tomb."
• Here are images of the artifacts that archaeologists unearthed.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

For 1,400 years, an underground burial chamber lay untouched in the British countryside, hiding its long-dead denizen and his royal secrets.

Then, in 2003, construction workers in the town of Prittlewell (about 40 miles from London) were expanding a roadway when they stumbled upon the remarkable tomb. Over time, researchers unearthed a lyre, gold coins, a golden belt buckle, and luxury items like drinking horns and bowls.

Unfortunately, the body of the occupant's body had long dissolved due to the acidic soil in this part of the UK; only tiny fragments of tooth enamel were left behind. The lack of human remains made it almost impossible for researchers to identify who the grave's owner was. But analysis of the other artifacts led archaeologists to believe that a Christian Anglo-Saxon prince had been entombed there.

Now, after more than 15 years of excavation and restoration work, archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) have discovered that the tomb may be the site of the earliest Christian royal burial in Britain.

The researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the gold coins, and extrapolated from there.

"The dating has helped us to clarify who it might or might not be,"Sophie Jackson, director of research and engagement at MOLA, told Business Insider."Initially we thought this could have been King Saebert...but we know that he died in 616, and this man is likely to have been buried in 580s or 590s."

King Saebert is believed to have been the first Saxon king from this part of Europe to convert to Christianity. The MOLA archaeologists now think the tomb belonged to Saebert's younger brother, Seaxa.

Jackson said in press release that the finding could be seen as a British "equivalent to Tutankhamun's tomb," since the splendor of this Anglo-Saxon prince's tomb rivals that of the Egyptian ruler better known as King Tut.

"This is one of the most significant Anglo-Saxon discoveries this country has seen," Jackson said.

Here are 23 images of the archaeologists' impressive findings.

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The burial chamber was constructed from timber, though the wood has long since decayed. Only stains and impressions of the structure in the soil remained.

One of the most important artifacts discovered was a partial lyre. This is the first time that a complete form of an Anglo-Saxon lyre has ever been found and recorded.

A triangular gold belt buckle gave archaeologists a big clue about who the tomb belonged to: The buckle, along with weapons found at the site, suggest a man was buried there, not a woman.

The researchers also excavated two gold foil crosses, which suggests the man buried at the site was a Christian.

"The discovery also provides a more nuanced view on the adoption of Christianity within elite families," Jackson said.

From the position of the skeleton's tooth fragments, archaeologists inferred that the two gold crosses were probably placed over his eyes at one end of the coffin.

Based on where the golden crosses and belt buckle were found inside the tomb, scientists estimate that the prince was about 5 feet 8 inches tall. That height indicates he was an adult or an adolescent.

The researchers think the prince may have been buried with a gold coin in each hand, with one hand on his chest and the other lying by his side.

The coins, which were discovered near the tooth fragments, helped archaeologists estimate a more precise date of the burial.

The tomb also held a 1400-year-old painted wooden box — the only surviving example of early Anglo-Saxon painted woodwork.

Findings like this copper-alloy flagon perhaps suggest that the prince may have enjoyed the occasional drink.

Vessels like this were often acquired by Christian pilgrims and shows that the flagon's owner was well-traveled, or had far reaching connections.

Analysis of objects like this one "has revealed where they were made and this in turn has helped us to learn more about the gift giving and trading between different elite families and kingdoms in the south of England," Jackson told Business Insider.

The flagon was likely made in Syria.

Archaeologists also dug up plenty of drinking cups.

This wooden drinking cup provided the archaeologists with crucial material they could use to carbon-date the burial chamber.

Archaeologists also discovered the remains of two matching drinking horns. Drinking horns were luxury items — a sign of the man's royal status.

By analyzing the organic material from the drinking horns, scientists were able to determine around when the animal whose horns were used had died.

The decorative gold rims on another set of drinking vessels also were a sign of the prince's wealth.

The researchers even found part of a wooden drinking bottle that was ringed with gold.

This copper bowl was yet another luxury item uncovered in the tomb.

The bowl was found hanging in what was likely its original position on the tomb wall.

The chamber also yielded two rare blue glass beakers.

The matching pair was discovered intact within the burial chamber.

A decorated green glass beaker was excavated as well.

Finally, archaeologists discovered iron hooks hammered into the chamber walls.

Some of these artifacts will be put on permanent display in the Southend Central Museum, near Prittlewell.

• Washington State is the first in the country to legalize human composting as an alternative to a traditional burial or cremation.
• The bill, SB 5001 "concerning human remains," was signed by Gov. Jay Inslee on Tuesday.
• Proponents of the law say it is an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional means of disposition, like burial or cremation.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee, who is running for president in the crowded 2020 Democratic field, signed SB 5001 "concerning human remains," on Tuesday — making Washington State the first in the country to legalize human composting as an alternative to a traditional burial or cremation.

Under the law, which is slated to take effect May 1, 2020, human remains can be disposed of through "natural organic reduction" or through alkaline hydrolysis, known as liquid cremation, which uses a chemical process including water, alkaline chemicals, and heat to reduce human remains to bone fragments. That practice is already legal in some states.

Inslee is running for president as "the climate candidate," with a progressive platform focused on environmental issues. Cremation emits carbon dioxide and particulates into the air, while burials take up land and can pollute the air and soil. The law signed Tuesday was touted as an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional means of disposition, which Washington State Sen. Jamie Pedersen, a Democrat from Seattle who sponsored the bill, described as "a serious weight on the earth and the environment as your final farewell,"according to The Associated Press.

The bill, which passed both legislative chambers with bipartisan majorities, opens the doors for a Seattle-based company called Recompose to become the country's first funeral home to offer human composting. 

Pedersen told the AP that the legislation was inspired by Recompose's founder, Katrina Spade, who first began researching the funeral industry as a architecture graduate student in Massachusetts. She founded Recompose in 2017 and is working to raise around $7 million to create a facility in Seattle and to begin expansion efforts. Recompose plans to charge around $5,500 for the service, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Once the law takes effect, Recompose plans to place the deceased in vessels, with material like wood chips and straw, as microbes break down bodies over the span of around a month. Those remains will create soil that friends or family have the option to take home and spread as a memory of their loved ones.

The state's funeral industry has had mixed reactions to the practice.

"I think some people were fine with it, others were not so fine with it," Rob Goff, executive director of the Washington State Funeral Directors Association, told the Seattle Times."It all boils down to personal choice for the families we're serving."

• Read more:
• Some Democrats are already blasting Joe Biden's reported 'middle ground' climate change plan for not going far enough
• Ice sheets are melting far faster than we thought — in a worst-case climate breakdown, coastal cities like New York and Shanghai would be swamped
• Scientists found 414 million pieces of trash on these tiny islands in the Indian Ocean — more proof that the plastic problem is out of control

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NOW WATCH: Nxivm founder Keith Raniere began his trial. Here's what happened inside the alleged sex-slave ring that recruited actresses and two billionaire heiresses.

• 11 people have died summiting Mount Everest this spring.
• The deaths this year bring the total Everest death toll to more than 300 people since explorers first started climbing the mountain in the early 1900s.
• The bodies of people who died climbing Everest still litter the mountain today, because it's a dangerous and life-threatening task to retrieve them.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Dead bodies are a common sight on top of Mount Everest. 

"I cannot believe what I saw up there," Everest filmmaker Elia Saikaly wrote on Instagram last week. "Death. Carnage. Chaos. Lineups. Dead bodies on the route." 

Eleven people have died climbing Mount Everest this spring, in what has become the peak's deadliest climbing sprint in recent memory. In 2015, an avalanche roared through Everest, killing at least 19 people.

When people die on Everest, it can be difficult to remove their bodies. Final repatriation costs tens of thousands of dollars (in some cases, around $70,000) and can also come at a fatal price itself: two Nepalese climbers died trying to recover a body from Everest in 1984. Instead, bodies are often left lying on the mountain.

Lhakpa Sherpa, who is the women's record-holder for most Everest summits, said she saw seven dead bodies on her way to the top of the mountain in 2018.

"Only near the top," she told Business Insider, remembering one man's body in particular that "looked alive, because the wind was blowing his hair."

Her memory is a grim reminder that removing dead bodies from Mount Everest is a pricey and potentially deadly chore, and one that is perhaps best left undone. 

Everest is crowded with tourists 

It's impossible to know for sure exactly where all of the 306 recorded Everest fatalities have ended up, but it's safe to say that many dead bodies never make it off the mountain. For years, Everest climbers have spoken of a dead man they call "Green Boots"who some have spotted lying in a cave roughly 1,130 feet from the top.

This year, Everest's victims hailed from India, Ireland, Austria, and the US. Some hikers are blaming the surge in deaths, in part, on preventable overcrowding.

As May temperatures warm and winds stall, the favorable springtime Everest climbing conditions are notorious for creating conveyor-belt style lines that snake towards the top of the mountain. Climbers can be so eager to reach the peak and stake their claim on an Everest summit that they'll risk their lives just to make it happen, even when others caution them to stay back. At least two climbers died of exhaustion on their way down from the summit this year, the BBC reported.

Other Everest climbers complain about risky human traffic jams in the mountain's so-called "death zone," the area of the hike that reaches above 8,000 meters (about 26,250 feet), where air is dangerously thin and most people use oxygen masks to stay safe.

Even with masks, this zone is not a great place to hang out for too long, and it's a spot where some deliriously loopy trekkers start removing desperately-needed clothes, and talking to imaginary companions, despite the freezing conditions.

Often, these tourists have spent anywhere from $25,000 to $75,000 to complete this once-in-a-lifetime trek. 

Removing bodies is dangerous and costs thousands of dollars

Getting bodies out of the death zone is a hazardous chore. 

"It's expensive and it's risky, and it's incredibly dangerous for the Sherpas," Everest climber Alan Arnette previously told the CBC. "What they have to do is reach the body, then they typically put it in some type of a rigging, sometimes a sled but often it's just a piece of fabric. They tie ropes onto that, and then they do a controlled slip of the body in the sled."

Arnette said he didn't want his body to go that way, and he signed some grim "body disposal" forms before he climbed Everest, ordering that his corpse should rest in place on the mountain in case he died during the trek.

"Typically you have your spouse sign this, so think about that conversation," he added. "You say leave me on the mountain, or get me back to Kathmandu and cremate, or try to get me back to my home country." 

"There's sort of this idea that there's only one mountain that really matters in the kind of Western, popular imagination," filmmaker and director Jennifer Peedom told Business Insider when her documentary, "Mountain" was released.

Peedom has climbed Everest herself four times, but says the thrill of summiting Everest is largely relegated to the history books, and for "true mountaineers," it's basically just an exercise in crowd control these days. 

"There seems to be a disaster mystique around Everest that seems to only serve to heighten the allure of the place," she said. "It is extremely overcrowded now and just getting more and more every year."

Indeed, the government in Nepal issued a record number of its $11,000 Everest permits this spring, with near 380 hikers approved to summit the peak by May 3.

SEE ALSO: What the top of Mount Everest is really like, according to the woman who's been there a record-breaking 9 times

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NOW WATCH: Mount Everest is not the hardest mountain to climb — here's what makes K2 so much worse

• Better Place Forests is a California-based company that helps people bury their loved ones' ashes under trees in protected forests.
• Sandy Gibson, Better Place's co-founder and chief executive, said the company's mission is to offer an alternative to traditional burials.
• Customers pay up to $30,000 for burials at the base of redwoods or other trees.
• Alternative burial options are gaining increasing attention. Others include composting bodies and burying people in suits lined with flesh-devouring mushrooms. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On the day that would have been his mother's 67th birthday — March 1, 2015 — Sandy Gibson drove to Toronto to sit by her grave. His mother had died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma when he was 11, but the cemetery where she was buried didn't give him the sense of connection he wanted; instead, he found himself watching the reflection of passing cars on the black tombstone.

"I remember thinking, 'God, there's got to be a better place than this,'" Gibson told Business Insider. 

That day, Gibson said, he called his friend (and future business partner) Brad Milne, and said, "I'm gonna do the tree thing, and we're gonna call it 'Better Place.'"

Gibson was referring to an idea that he and Milne had talked about before: A company that would offer people a way to bury their loved ones' cremated ashes at the base of a tree. The tree could remain theirs for perpetuity, nestled in a privately owned, permanently protected forest. 

Today, their company, called Better Place Forests, has 124 acres of land for this purpose across two forests: the Point Arena Forest north of San Francisco and an area in the Santa Cruz mountains. The Point Arena location officially opened this spring; the Santa Cruz forest began taking reservations in February.

Better Place Forests' model involves buying tracts of forest and ensuring that the land will never get developed via a series of easement agreements. Customers can select a tree — a redwood or something smaller — and pay to bury their ashes or those of a loved one (mixed with soil and fertilizer) at the tree's roots. The company calls this burial method "spreading."

Buried beneath trees, not gravestones

Gibson's father died of a stroke a year before his mother, so he was raised by his half brother from age 12 on. His parents are buried together.

"I spent my whole life going to their cemetery," Gibson said. "I didn't like that experience." 

By contrast, the spreadings that Better Place Forests sells involve mixing a person's ashes with local soil, then putting the mixture into a 3-foot-by-2-foot trench dug in front of a tree. The trench gets covered with more soil and wildflower seeds. Each tree gets a small, bronze memorial marker at its base to commemorate the dead.

"In the end, it almost looks like no one was there," Gibson said. "It's about becoming part of the Earth, part of this place, forever."

Costs of an individual spreading range from $3,000 — which pays for a burial at the base of a tree like a madrone, tanoak, or douglas fir — to $30,000, which gives customers the rights to the soil under an old, large redwood. Customers can also purchase a "family tree" under which they can spread six people's ashes (additional spreading rights for more family members can be purchased as needed). For less than $1,000, people can be buried under a communal tree. None of these totals  include the cost of cremation, however, which averagesa little over $1,000. 

So far, less than 100 families have performed spreading ceremonies at Better Place Forests' Point Arena location. But thousands have reserved trees, according to Gibson. The company has earned $12 million in investment capital. 

One additional offering that differentiates Better Place Forests from traditional burials, Gibson said, is that people can choose to be buried with their pets. That's not generally permitted in cemeteries.

Revamping the death industry

Better Place Forests is not alone in its mission to buck traditional burial practices. In May, Washington state became the first to legalize human composting. Another more eco-friendly burial method involves cloaking a body in a biodegradable coat lined with mushroom spores that devour human flesh.

Read More:Composting human bodies to turn them into soil will soon be legal in one US state — part of a growing green death trend

These alternatives generally require less land than traditional burials and are better for the environment — which is why they're sometimes referred to as part of a "green burial" movement.

Recompose, a Seattle-based start-up that hopes to provide Americans with a body-composing service, estimates that one metric ton of carbon dioxide is saved for every person who opts to compost a body instead of cremating it. (That's roughly equivalent to taking a gas-powered car off the road for about three months.)

Although cremation is still part of Better Place Forests' process, its burials don't use coffins or body-embalming fluid that could leak into the water table. According to a 2012 study, more than 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde are put into the ground every year in the US, along with 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 104,272 tons of steel, and 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete.

Conventional burials also use 30 million board feet of hardwood each year in the US — equivalent to about 4 million acres of forest, which could be used to build about 4.5 million homes.

According to Gibson, the thousands of trees in Better Place Forests' two locations have already sequestered 153 million pounds (about 70,000 metric tons) of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Alternative burial methods, in general, are also cheaper than traditional ones.

The cost of funerals, caskets, and burial plots have increased more than twice as fast as the average for all other commodities, the New York Times reported. In the Bay Area, where Better Place Forests is based, a funeral and plot can cost up to $20,000. In some other densely populated urban areas, a single burial plot in a private cemetery can reach $25,000, while a double-depth plot with room for two bodies can cost up to $50,000, according to Love Lives On, an online funeral-planning service.

So Better Place Forests' price ceiling of $30,000 can still be cheaper than buying a family plot, Gibson said.

"A grave is the third most expensive thing someone will buy in their life, after their house and their car," he added.

What's next for Better Place Forests

In the coming years, Better Place is looking to expand their West Coast location offerings. Gibson said he's heard from people who want to be buried in other parts of California like Tahoe, Yosemite, Big Sur, and Monterey.

By 2020, he said, the company plans to open forests in at least four other states as well: Colorado, Arizona, Washington, and Oregon.

"We're quickly trying to acquire as much land as we can," Gibson said. "We get calls from people across the country, always with the question of 'When are you coming to our city?'"

But opening new forest burial areas comes with challenges, since the company must arrange new easements each time — basically the legal right to use the property for this purpose.

"We are structuring conservation easements with land trusts on each forest to remove certain development rights and preserve the property as open space," Gibson said.

Developing these forests also involves a lot of landscaping in order to make the trees accessible; the company adds paths, driveways, parking lots, bathrooms, and visitor centers. Plus, Better Place Forests promises customers it will "fund ongoing and future maintenance" of the spaces where people are buried.

Despite these challenges, Gibson envisions his company as the beginning of a movement away from cemeteries. And he laments this wasn't an option when his own mother passed away.

"This incredibly beautiful, inspiring woman died at 46, and all that's left is this black tombstone. It never felt right," he said. "I would've 100% preferred this over a cemetery." 

SEE ALSO: 6 mind-blowing ways people dispose of their corpses instead of traditional burials

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NOW WATCH: NASA is looking for ways to dispose of dead bodies in space

• Using time-lapse photography, scientists in Australia have discovered that corpses move around for at least a year after death.
• The research showed that — over the course of 17 months — decomposing corpses' arms moved upward and outward from their original placement at the body's side.
• Understanding how corpses' limbs change positions during the decomposition process could help inform criminal investigations. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The dead may not always rest in peace, new research shows. For more than a year after death, corpses move around "significantly," and this finding could be important for forensic investigations.

Researchers at an Australia-based decomposition research facility — colloquially known as a "body farm", a term some scientists find disrespectful — made the startling discovery after using time-lapse cameras to film decomposing corpses.

For 17 months, a camera at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER) has been taking overhead images of a corpse every 30 minutes during daylight hours. And for the duration of the research, the corpse has continued to move.

"What we found was that the arms were significantly moving, so that arms that started off down beside the body ended up out to the side of the body," medical scientist Alyson Wilson of Central Queensland University told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Some post-mortem movement was expected in the very early stages of decomposition, she explained, but the fact that it continued for the entire duration of filming was a complete surprise.

"We think the movements relate to the process of decomposition, as the body mummifies and the ligaments dry out,"Wilson said.

"This knowledge could be significant in unexplained death investigations."

Using time-lapse photography to study corpse behavior

In fact, it could change how scientists analyze and interpret crime scenes, particularly when human remains have been undiscovered for some time.

Until now, unless there was evidence that a body had been moved — either by animals or people — forensic scientists generally would assume that the position of a discovered body is the position at time of death.

Since Wilson's research is the first use of a time-lapse camera to study human decomposition, this is also the first evidence that assumptions about a body's position at the time of death may not be true.

A paper describing the discovery that corpses are rather more lively than expected has yet to be published, but this research follows up on Wilson's previous work, which was published in the journal Forensic Science International: Synergy earlier this year.

In that study, Wilson and her colleagues used a time-lapse camera to track the decomposition of a corpse for six months. The researchers compared the images to a system of classifying different levels of body decomposition in order to determine how long the person had been dead for — which is called the post-mortem interval.

The system neatly matched the time-lapse photographs, adding to the system's validity as a forensic tool; additionally, the team's results validated the usefulness of time-lapse cameras in forensic research.

Knowledge of how a corpse moves after death could inform criminal investigations

Based on these findings, it appears that if enough corpses are studied with long-term time-lapse photography to generate statistical data on bodies' movements after death, that knowledge could be used to analyze crime scenes with greater accuracy in the future.

Such a database would provide information on the ways in which people are likely to move, which in turn could allow forensic scientists to reconstruct the position the body was in at the time of death. In turn, that could help investigators determine out what happened.

"They'll map a crime scene, they'll map the victim's body position, they'll map any physical evidence which is found, and they can understand the cause of death,"Wilson told AFP.

SEE ALSO: A California company is burying people's ashes under trees instead of gravestones — and thousands have already signed up

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NOW WATCH: What happens to the human body after 100 years inside a coffin

• A remote lake nicknamed "Skeleton Lake" sits more than 16,500 feet up in the Indian Himalayas.
• The lake, which is actually called Roopkund, is the final resting place of up to 800 human skeletons and frozen bodies.
• One researcher who traveled there said visitors "can't take a single step without stepping on bones."
• DNA analysis has shown that some of the remains were from groups of people who died about 1,000 years apart.
• Scientists still don't know what killed the people buried at the lake or how they ended up there.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Nestled high in the Indian Himalayas, a tiny body of water has earned a macabre nickname: "Skeleton Lake."

Officially named Roopkund, the lake's edges are rimmed with human bones and frozen bodies — some with frozen hair and flesh still attached. Bold hikers have stacked some of the remains into morbid shrines.

On a rare summer day, when parts of the lake melt, more scattered skeletal remains sometimes float to the surface. Researchers have determined that up to 800 people are buried there. 

"It's a small, enclosed space, and there are bones everywhere," William Sax, an anthropologist who visited Roopkund in 1978 and consulted on a 2004 National Geographic documentary about the lake, told Business Insider. "It feels scary and disturbing."

Anthropologists like Sax are interested in the area because nobody knows what killed the people buried there. A forest ranger named Hari Kishan Madhwal came upon the lake in 1942, yet more than 75 years later, researchers are no closer to pinpointing how or why these people perished. The mystery of the lake deepened this summer, when a DNA study of 38 skeletons revealed that people from three genetically distinct groups had died at Roopkund in at least two waves, about 1,000 years apart.

Read More:Hundreds of skeletons were found in a mysterious Himalayan lake. A new analysis shows that some of them died 1,000 years apart.

"We expected that this analysis would help resolve the mystery of Roopkund Lake by determining the ancestry of these skeletons," Eadaoin Harney, the lead author of that recent study, told Business Insider. "While we did accomplish this goal, I think we have instead revealed that this site is even more mysterious than we ever expected." 

Here's what it's like to visit Roopkund, and a few scientists' best guesses about what might have happened there.

SEE ALSO: In a lost lake 3,500 feet under the Antarctic ice, scientists just found the carcasses of tiny creatures

For the recent analysis, Harney and her team drilled into the femurs and long arm bones of dozens of skeletons from the lake to extract DNA.

They found that of the 38 skeletons examined, 23 had ancestry related to people from present-day India and died between the seventh and 10th centuries, during several events.

Fourteen of the skeletons, meanwhile, were most closely related to people from the Mediterranean islands of Crete and Greece, and one had Southeast Asian ancestry. That group of 15 individuals died between the 17th and 20th centuries, likely in a single event.

That discovery changed scientists' understanding of Skeleton Lake, since previous research had suggested that most of the bones at the site dated back to the year 800 or so.

Sax said the new data about a second wave of deaths was "a real stunner."

"The timing of that most recent event — which happened sometime in the last few hundred years — makes it a really interesting puzzle," he added. 

Conducting this kind of research at the lake isn't easy. Roopkund, which means "lake of form" in Hindi, is more than 16,500 feet above sea-level.

The surrounding environs  are breathtakingly beautiful, Sax said. The lake is located in India's Nanda Devi National Park.

Still, he added, "there's no reason for anybody to be up there." That's what makes the presence of these skeletons so mysterious.

For visitors to the lake, Sax said, the site's macabre history is plainly visible: "You can't take a single step without steeping on bones."

Some travelers have collected the bones and stacked them in piles, out of fascination or perhaps respect. But such human interference disturbs the site, Harney said.

It makes it "quite difficult to perform standard archaeological analyses on these remains," she added.

Some tourists reportedly even take bones away from the site as morbid souvenirs.

Myriad explanations have been put forward as to how these individuals perished, from a freak hailstorm to a mass ritual suicide.

Harney's team thinks it's possible that some people who perished during the first wave of Skeleton Lake deaths experienced "a mass death during a pilgrimage event."

The lake is near a present-day pilgrimage route through the region, the study authors wrote.

A local folk song even describes a mass pilgrimage to the shrine of a mountain goddess, called Nanda Devi, near the lake.

The study authors said the song is about "a king and queen and their many attendants, who — due to their inappropriate, celebratory behavior — were struck down by the wrath of Nanda Devi." The lyrics recount the goddess flinging balls as "hard as iron."

Those balls of iron could have been hail that rained down during a severe storm, according to the study authors.

Harney said researchers observed compression fractures on several of the skeletons that might be consistent with injuries from a hailstorm or rockslide.

Sax also recalled that some of the skulls found near the lake appeared to have been cracked open, damaged by blunt objects.

Ultimately, though, Harney is hesitant to speculate about any causes of death, since it's not possible to determine that information through the genetic analysis her team completed.

Since the skeletons date back to multiple different time periods, it's likely that they died in different ways, she said.

In their analysis, Harney's team wrote that the findings "refute previous suggestions that the skeletons of Roopkund Lake were deposited in a single catastrophic event."

Harney and her colleagues' analysis did, however, put to rest a few theories about what could have killed the people at the lake.

These groups probably didn't die in an epidemic, as a 2004 National Geographic documentary suggested, because the DNA analysis found no evidence of bacterial infection in any of the skeletons.

Battle probably wasn't the cause either, since the skeletons Harney's team examined came from 23 males and 15 females, including children and elderly people, and no weapons were found nearby.

Kathleen Morrison, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the recent study, offered one other possible explanation: "When you see a lot of human skeletons, usually it's a graveyard," she told The Atlantic.

"I suspect that they're aggregated there, that local people put them in the lake," she said, noting that it's unlikely all these people died at the lake's edge.

But Harney thinks the site is too remote to be a graveyard. "I don't know of any evidence that would support this," she said.

What's more, Harney's team analyzed DNA from present-day groups that live in the areas closest to Roopkund, and did not find many genetic similarities between these individuals and the skeletons. That indicates it's unlikely that a local population once used this site as a burial ground.

Harney said further study of the bones and bodies is needed to figure out how these individuals died.

"I think that there are really two parts to this mystery," she said. "The first is, who are these people and why did they go to Roopkund Lake?"

To answer that question, Harney thinks researchers would need to find historical written accounts that describe a journey to Roopkund.

"The second question that I would like to answer is, how did these individuals die?" she said. "There are a large number of remains still at Roopkund Lake that are yet to be analyzed in any way, so it is possible that in the future we will be better able to answer this question."

• Earlier this year, Washington passed a bill that makes it the first US state to allow human composting. The law will go into effect in 2020. 
• Seattle-based company Recompose intends to open the world's first human -composting facility in 2021.
• The facility will convert human remains into soil, then allow families to take the soil home and plant it in their gardens. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When a human being's time is up in Western countries, we generally have two main options for our mortal remains — burial or cremation. Now, a world-first facility has been set up to offer a unique alternative ritual to traditional choices: compost.

Recompose, which is scheduled to begin operations in Seattle, Washington, in 2021, bills itself as the world's first human composting facility, offering to gently convert human remains into soil in a process it calls "recomposition" or "natural organic reduction."

The company, a public benefit corporation led by founder Katrina Spade, has been in the works for years, but became a legally viable service this year when Washington passed a historic bill to become the first US state to allow human composting.

The law goes into effect in May 2020, enabling what Spade calls a "death-care revolution," in which bodies of the deceased will transform into soil in the company's reusable, hexagonal "recomposition vessels."

The process draws upon the traditional principles of natural or "green" burials, but takes place inside the reusable vessels, rather than being permanently interred at the same time.

"Bodies are covered with wood chips and aerated, providing the perfect environment for naturally occurring microbes and beneficial bacteria," Recompose's web site explains. "Over the span of about 30 days, the body is fully transformed, creating soil which can then be used to grow new life."

Once the composting process is complete, family and friends of the departed are encouraged to take some or all of the cubic yard of soil generated per person (amounting to several wheelbarrows of soil), and can use it to grow their own gardens, with remaining soil being used for conservation purposes.

Conservation aims are a linchpin of the company's overall purpose — and the law that will let companies like Recompose operate. The company's goal is to provide a more environmentally friendly end-of-life ritual than burying embalmed corpses in wooden caskets, or burning remains in cremation, which is energy intensive due to the high temperatures required, and produces carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Recompose estimates each person who chooses their organic reduction process (at a fee of about $5,500) over cremation or conventional burial will save about one ton of CO2, thanks to the carbon sequestration which occurs at different points throughout the process — not to mention the benefits of producing useful soil, rather than taking up limited land.

"I think one of the things for me, in addition to [the] carbon savings, is just having a way to create useable soil," Spade told Citylab in January. "Something that you can go grow a tree with and have sort of this ritual around that feels meaningful."

SEE ALSO: A California company is burying people's ashes under trees instead of gravestones — and thousands have already signed up

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: An Israeli startup invented a compost bin that converts kitchen waste to cooking fuel

The coronavirus has killed more than 210,000 people in the US, bringing with it a surge in cremations to alleviate crushing demand on a funeral industry unprepared for a deadly pandemic. Traditional burials, predictably, took a nosedive.

In fact, about 37.5% of US decedents could be buried in 2020, down 7.7 percentage points from 2015, and about 56% will be cremated, a jump of 8.1 percentage points from five years ago, according to a July report by the National Funeral Directors Association.

But that's an acceleration of an ongoing trend: Around 2015, more decedents were cremated than buried for the first time in the US, and the NFDA data suggests there will be two cremations for every burial in 2025, growing to five cremations to one burial by 2040.

In this shift, entrepreneurs and technologists have seen opportunity: Instead of storing cremated remains of a loved one in an urn, to maybe someday be scattered, bodies can now be composted, turned into plant-food pods, converted to diamonds, or more recently, pressed into dozens of smooth, stone-like objects.

"Getting these has been sort of transformative, in a way," Garth Clark, who turned his parents into stones, said in a video for Parting Stone, the company that "solidifies" cremated remains. "I use them as a sort of worry bead." 

The company developed the technology with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, later partnering with more than 200 funeral homes nationwide to take ash, bone fragments, and other materials found in cremated remains, then transform them into "parting stones."

Parting Stone Founder Justin Crowe told Business Insider about the technology his company developed, why people might choose parting stones over urns, and how he feels holding the remains of his own grandfather. 

Note: The following answers have been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

How do you make the stones?

The process of solidifying remains requires just a few basic steps following the cremation. After arriving at the Parting Stone lab, the full-amount of granular cremated remains are gently refined into powder. A small amount of binder is added to create a clay-like material from which the solids are formed. The solids are carefully placed into a kiln for solidification and then they are polished and returned to the family. 

How much does it cost to turn a person into stones? How about a pet? 

Our solidification service costs $595.00 for a human, $295.00 for a dog and $245.00 for a cat.

How do the stones feel?

The solidified remains act and feel very much like normal river stones. The material is clean and permanent like ceramic. The solids will not dissolve in water or scratch with your fingernail. They will outlast us on Earth.

How many stones does an average person become after death? 

The solidification of an adult results in around 40 to 60 solids. Alternately, let's say we receive 8 cups of conventional cremated remains following cremation, our process returns about the same amount, 8 cups, of solidified remains.

What do people normally do with their stones? Do they distribute them among family members, or keep them in one container like ashes?

One of the most exciting aspects of developing this technology has been seeing all of the new ways in which people are staying connected with their loved ones. Many people will share the solidified remains with friends and family, travel with them, leave them in meaningful places, or carry the solidified remains' solids in their pocket every day. 

One customer held a "reveal party" with their family where they got together, poured champagne, and opened the box of solidified remains together. Everyone got to see the shape and natural color of their loved one's remains for the first time. They passed them around the kitchen table, told stories about their loved one's life, and at the end of the night everyone got to take home the stones that they liked best.  

How does a family planning a cremation find out about this alternative to conventional ash? 

When planning a death with one of our funeral home partners, families are given the option of receiving either cremated remains or solidified remains following the cremation.

If a family is already living with ashes, they can also request our solidification service directly on our website and we will mail a collection kit to begin the process.

What is the return-to-ash guarantee?

If a family is not satisfied with the solidified remains, Parting Stone can re-process them into an ash-like material. We know that this form of remains is new for many people and that remains are often one of our most cherished possessions so we want to ensure that every family we work with feels confident choosing this option. 

Isn't it a bit strange — maybe even creepy — to turn people into stones?

As a person who has lived with ashes, I feel that cremated remains are creepy and uncomfortable. You can see bone fragments, you are always nervous about spilling them or getting them on you, and it's sometimes embarrassing to have them out when people are visiting your home. 

Solidified remains are nice to live with and have allowed me to feel a meaningful connection with the remains of my grandfather — something that I never felt towards the conventional ash. 

SEE ALSO: Dead people and pets are being forged into sparkling blue diamonds — here's how

DON'T MISS: A California company is burying people's ashes under trees instead of gravestones — and thousands have already signed up

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NOW WATCH: NASA is looking for ways to dispose of dead bodies in space — and it's getting weird