Death is a process of decomposition, how can we come to embrace this reality? This week, guest Katrina Spade joins Ayana for a fascinating conversation on the possibilities of burial practices, ways to connect with death, and the value in thoughtful death plans. Sharing her journey to founding Recompose, “a licensed, full-service, green funeral home in Seattle offering human composting,” Katrina shares that the way we design death rituals matters in how connected we feel to the process of death. 

By offering an alternative to cremation and conventional burial, which are the most common burial options in the United States, Katrina emphasizes that there is choice even in death. Touching on the ways that the funeral industry was founded and embalming came to be a wide-spread practice, Katrina’s visions for the future of death-care shine through. Rooting her work within the knowledge that green and natural burials have been practiced across the world for years, Katrina focuses specifically on urban environments where the space for a natural burial may not be readily available.  

Detailing the science, logistics, and art behind human composting, Katrina imbues the conversation with passion, concern, and a spirit of learning. Through Recompose, Katrina has witnessed the beauty that comes from watching new life blossom from death, and from the connections family members of the deceased can have with the soil created from the composting process. The intention and compassion we put into death-care matters.  As Katrina reminds us, there is so much to be gained from intimacy with death.

Katrina Spade is the founder and CEO of Recompose, a public benefit corporation leading the transformation of the funeral industry. Katrina is a designer and the inventor of a system that transforms the dead into soil (aka human composting).

Since founding in 2017, Katrina and Recompose have led the successful legalization of human composting in Washington State in 2019. Recompose became the first company in the world to offer the service in December of 2020. The process is now also legal in Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, California, and New York.

Katrina and her team have been featured in Fast Company, NPR, the Atlantic, BBC, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Times. She is an Echoing Green Fellow, an Ashoka fellow, and a Harvard Kennedy School Visiting Social Innovator.

♫ The music featured in this episode is “Sunset Song,” “Returning,” and “Waking Chant” by Yesol.

Episode References

Recompose 

Life After Death: What Human Burial Options Will Look Like in a Sustainable Future – Discover

Is Composting the Future of Death? – The Takeaway

An Urban Solution For Ecological Death Care: Recompose's Founder and CEO Katrina Spade on Developing a New Idea, Finding Experts, and Creating Change — Madame Architect

Returning to Our Roots: The Rise in Human Composting – Atmos

SUBSCRIBE & Listen

Subscribe to For The Wild RSS →
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or another platform →

For The Wild is a gathering place for ideas and solutions ensuring that the growing body of work that we steward remains accessible to the public. If you want to see us continue, or perhaps are especially moved by the episode you are listening to today, please become a monthly sustaining member through our Patreon or consider making a one-time donation directly to us through our website. To stay up-to-date on our work, sign up for our newsletter.