For most of us after our deaths, our final wish is to be either buried or cremated.
But from today for those living in Washington, there is to be a third option which, rather than pushing up daisies, will instead help them flourish.
For in a bid to tackle the growing shortage of burial space and the damage to the environment current funerals inflict, humans are to be composted instead.
If successful, the move could be adopted in the UK which, with around 78 per cent of people opting to be cremated, sees a staggering 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere.
In America, as some cities are no longer allowing extensions of burial grounds, people opting to become ashes has become an increasingly popular option.
The over the last four years cremations have overtaken burials over the previous four years dumping around 354,300 tons of carbon emissions each year.
Add these figures to hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wood for coffins and the millions of gallons of embalming fluids placed into the ground each year it all adds up into an environmental disaster.
Some studies have shown the energy used to cremate one body is the same as the monthly home-energy demands of an average American.
The average cremation “takes up about the same amount of energy and has the same emissions as about two tanks of gas in an average car,” says Nora Menkin, executive director of the Seattle-based People’s Memorial Association, which helps people decide how they’d like to be deposed of.
“So, it’s not nothing.”
Now as US company, whose founder led the fight to see America’s first “aboveground decomposition” law passed, is set to become the world’s first corpse composting service next year.
Called Recompose, its creator and CEO Katrina Spade says for around £4,500 her company will be able to turn bodies into compost and return the soil to loved ones.
The 43-year-old came up with the idea 13 years ago when she began to question her mortality.
“When I die, this planet, which has protected and supported me my whole life, shouldn’t I give back what I have left?” she says.
“It is just logical and also beautiful.”
Her studies show the process generates around a cubic yard of nutrient-rich soil from the human body.
It also requires an eighth of the energy needed for cremation and saves one metric ton of carbon dioxide per person in comparison. The process uses less space in comparison to burials as well.
Once a body has been through the 30-day recomposing process the hope is they will be spread on a garden or to help grow a tree, just as people can spread cremated ashes.
Professor of sustainable and organic agriculture at Washington state university, Lynne Carpenter-Boggs was recruited by Spade to prove human bodies can be safely composted.
It was her previous work helping farms compost dead livestock that had caught Spade's attention.
She said when first comparing her previous work with farm animals to that with humans “it just doesn’t feel right”.
She says: “It feels like a little too natural method. It feels very, very agricultural and most people are just not familiar with how composting works. It didn’t seem like anybody would ever really accept it as a method.
“So to take the concept and the basic principles that we know work really well and put it into a really different context where it becomes not only acceptable but a really beautiful process that has been the goal.”
The Professor was provided with six bodies who had volunteered before their deaths to become human guinea pigs for the trials.
Each body is placed in a long barrel like container on a bed of special plant materials including alfalfa, straw grass and wood chips, with another layer place on top.
Once the door is closed carbon and nitrogen provide energy to powerful thermophilic (heat-loving) microbes that then break down the body. Bones and teeth tooth.
The containers are turned over occasionally while the airflow is “tweaked” as the heat rises inside the chamber up to 55c - the same temperature Heston Blumenthal recommends you cook meat.
The Professor adds: “Most of the activity is by bacteria and they don’t have mouths like the larger organisms we think about, they release enzymes outside of their bodies.
“So essentially you have trillions of little enzyme and acid making machines that are leaking out these enzymes and acids, and it’s that chemical mix that primarily makes things decompose.
“The cells come apart, molecules come apart, and then those same bacteria are then able to feed on the very tiny molecules that have been released from that chemical process.”
Once complete, the result is mix similar to potting compost.
In November plans were unveiled for Recompose’s 18,500-square-foot after-death facility in Seattle’s SoDo (South of Downtown) neighbourhood.
According to the company, it will be “the first facility in the world to provide a sustainable option for after-death care”.
Inside an open area will be used to hold ceremonies, with chairs arranged in a circular pattern to accommodate the gatherings with the body covered on a bed of plant material before then placed inside a container.
“The core of the new facility’s space is a modular system containing approximately 75 of these vessels, stacked and arranged to demarcate space for rituals and memorial ceremonies,” Recompose say.
Growing concerns about climate change have been a significant factor in so many people expressing interest in the service before its launch.
Tens of thousands have signed up to to receive Recompse newsletter which more expected following the law’s enactment on May 1.
The team believe as people become more environmentally conscious human composting, much like the flowers and trees their bodies will be spread on, will only grow.
Professor Carpenter-Boggs told NPR radio: “Even when there’s a little bit of negative or just unfamiliarity with the idea once you start talking about how beautiful that this can be, we see that there’s a lot of people who are really interested in it.”
But despite the fanfare surrounding human composting, British experts have raised scepticism over the development.
Rosie Inman-Cook, manager of The Natural Death Centre Charity, told Mirror Online: "I personally will not believe it until I actually see it.
"The industry, public and investors have been stung with 'new solutions' a couple of times over the last decade.
"Solutions that turn out to be hyped out of control by the media, just theoretical, neither built or operational.
"Just because Ms Spade had established the right to carry out her 'process' in law and statute does not mean that it is actually going to happen."
