Micah Truman is giving people a chance to do what, he says, we've always wanted to do: return to the earth after we, well, are no longer. Truman is the CEO of Return Home, a new player in America's $20 billion "death-care industry." Among a growing number of companies that offer alternatives to traditional burial or cremation, this start-up is one of the first in the U.S. to offer a service known as "natural organic reduction" — or human composting — which transforms human remains into soil.
"I think we're going to see a very powerful movement rise from this," Truman says. "You know, this is going to be ‘death tech,' for want of a better word. It's going to be a really big thing because it meets so much more than just an environmental goal. It lets us go back."
Growing acceptance
In June 2021, two years after Washington became the first U.S. state to legalize human composting, Return Home opened its $3 million facility in Auburn, near Seattle. Since then, it has processed more than 70 bodies from ten different states. As more states decide to legalize the process, Truman plans to open 20 more facilities across America by 2026.
An important part of Return Home's success, Truman explains, is the company's TikTok account, which has almost half a million followers and offers more than 100 videos explaining, in an open and friendly way, how human composting and other death-care processes work. "We are able to give a message to millions of people at the press of a button, which is very unusual for a company of our size," he says. "And our messaging is unlike that of any other funeral home in the world."
Truman, who has a background in online technology and real-estate investment, got the idea for Return Home when he heard about Washington's proposed new law on human composting and discovered that cremation, the preferred method of disposal there, is highly toxic. With a vision that human composting was "going to change the world," Truman spent over two years raising millions of dollars and working with a team of experts, including scientists, engineers, a funeral director and a death doula — essentially a midwife for deaths, not births. He describes the company's facility as the first of its kind in the world. Return Home has even created its own trademarked term for the service it offers: "terramation."
"The problem with ‘human composting' is that it sounds like something we do with food scraps," Truman says. "It has a connotation to it that I think people don't necessarily feel warmth towards. We don't say: ‘Would you incinerate your loved one?' or ‘How about we enter them underground?' We have words that allow people to think in a constructive way. And that's what we've done here."
How does terramation actually work?
The remains of each body are placed inside one of the facility's 74 vessels, along with organic materials, which include straw, alfalfa and sawdust, and left to decompose. Humidity and other conditions inside the vessel are strictly controlled. After 60 days, the contents of the vessel have been transformed into about 400 pounds (181 kilograms) of soil and are returned to the family or scattered at The Woodland — an eight-acre plot nearby, which Return Home is developing into a community park.
Not only is human composting more environmentally friendly than traditional methods of human disposal, it's also cheaper — at just under $5,000. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the average cost of a funeral with cremation in the U.S. is almost $7,000, while a funeral with a viewing and burial costs nearly $8,000.
Return Home has cited data on the environmental impact of burials, which require resources such as wood, steel and concrete, as well as that of cremations, which collectively emit an estimated 360,000 metric tons of CO2 per year in the U.S. alone.
Changing traditions
Truman says one of the challenges he faces is to convince others in the death-care industry to get on board with the idea. "Very traditional" is how Truman describes his industry, which hasn't seen a lot of innovation since the early 1960s, when cremation became common practice. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, Return Home won Washington state's 2022 Funeral Home of the Year award, an achievement Truman says is "incredibly encouraging."
Regulation is another obstacle to Return Home's plans for expansion. So far, human composting has been legalized in very few states, although this number is expected to increase. In the meantime, the company will continue to accept remains from around the country, and Truman is proud to say that, unlike some traditional funeral homes, which may serve a certain demographic, Return Home does not discriminate. "In our case, it's everybody: Black, white, Asian, Pacific Islander, gay, straight, trans, as young as 18, as old as 98…"
Perhaps the biggest difficulty of all, however, is that death is a difficult topic for many people. "The challenge is not that we have a cool technology," he said. "I think cool technology is quite common. It's that we're talking about death. The moment you say, ‘Well, we do human composting, transforming human remains into soil,' the answer is, ‘Oh, you know, that's morbid' or ‘That's weird.'"
As indicated by the response to Return Home on TikTok, Truman says it is young people who generally have the greatest interest in human composting. "Our younger people are much, much better at talking about this than our older ones. And that's a bit sad, and ironic. Our older ones are supposed to be the people that help lead us. But we've taken a lot of young people in our facility, and we believe our young people are going to teach us to die better."
Three ways to go...
The U.S. allows just three legal alternatives to traditional burial or cremation:
- Natural organic reduction, also called "human composting," which Return Home refers to as "terramation." This transforms human remains into compost.
- Natural burial, in which a body returns to the earth in a natural and eco-friendly way. Usually, unembalmed remains are buried in a biodegradable container.
- Alkaline hydrolysis, a process for the disposal of remains using lye and heat, which turns the body into liquid.