Human composting, or turning bodies into soil after death, continues to be a growing trend. Advocates for this natural process say it's kinder to the environment than a traditional burial or cremation. CBS Sunday Morning talked to Marie Eaton, a Bellingham, Washington resident, who used the soil from her late brother, Wayne Dodge, to nourish the Japanese maple trees he loved.
"What do you say to people who will hear this and say, 'That just sounds a little creepy or a little strange'?"
Eaton replied, "I might invite them to think a little bit about what traditional burial involves, which is embalming a body, putting it inside a lead-lined coffin, and putting it into a concrete vault in the ground, as though we were pretending the person's not dead. That, to me, is much more creepy than this process of naturally becoming part of the soil again."
Eaton had this done at Recompose in Seattle, the first place in the U.S. where you can turn a person into compost. It costs about $7,000 and takes about a month for a body to become soil, which can then be used in many ways.
While legal in six states so far (California, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont), some folks, like the New York State Catholic Conference, are against it, saying it is "more appropriate for vegetable trimmings and eggshells than for human bodies."
