Soylent Green for real …
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When Dennis Cunningham was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he wanted his death to reflect the values he lived by. As a civil rights lawyer, Cunningham defended the Black Panthers, AIDS protestors, and later, environmental activists from Earth First.
“He was a profound environmentalist,” his son, Joe Mellis, said.
In his spare time, Cunningham built sculptures out of driftwood, bottle caps, and rusted car parts in his backyard studio in San Francisco. He wanted his body to be part of that same cycle of decay and regeneration.
He instructed his kids to have him composted after he died.
“It was totally in keeping with who he was to not make waste, but to use waste,” said Cunningham’s daughter, Miranda Mellis.
To Cunningham, being turned into soil and spread on the forest floor to fertilize new trees was much more appealing than being burned to ash or entombed in a concrete vault underground.
A growing number of Americans are likewise eager to see more environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional burial and cremation. Human composting is the latest option.
But not everywhere, or even in most states. When Cunningham died on March 5, 2022, at his son’s house in Los Angeles, it wasn’t an option there.
“It’s literally illegal to compost a body in the state of California,” said his son Joe Mellis. “We had to transport his body from California to Washington to do this.”
Seven states have legalized human composting to date, including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Vermont, and New York. It took California lawmakers three tries to pass a law to do the same, but it won’t take effect until 2027.
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At Recompose in Seattle, families can hold a funeral ceremony known as a laying-in before the body is prepared for human composting. In this photo, a demonstration mannequin stands in for the body. Afterwards, the body is moved into a composting vessel in the adjacent building and surrounded with wood chips, alfalfa, and straw to start the 30-40 day process. April Dembosky/KQED
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