Green-Wood Cemetery in 2025. Photo by Susan De Vires
In its pursuit of a more environmentally friendly future, Green-Wood Cemetery goes back to basics.
Starting next year, the legendary cemetery will offer a new burial option: “natural organic reduction,” also known as human composting.
The process is quite similar to regular composting. Bodies are confined in specialized “pods” on a bed of hay, straw and alfalfa. The pods – designed to regulate moisture and air flow – gently move back and forth to speed decomposition.
After just 40 days, the pod’s contents break down into approximately 160 pounds of nutrient-rich soil, which will be used to support Green-Wood’s many plants and trees.
Photo via My Earth
“I think it’s really important to look at this as just another way we deal with death,” said Green-Wood President Meera Joshi. “If you look through history, there have been so many different ways that people commemorate death across cultures and over time. In some ways this is the original way. It just has the benefit of technology so it can happen more quickly.”
Green-Wood will collaborate with the German “terramation” company My earth – or “My Soil” – on this endeavor, and plans to become the first cemetery in New York to offer human composting, which the state legalized in 2023.
Human composting is both environmentally and economically beneficial to the vast cemetery. Green-Wood is a registered arboretum and has been committed to combating climate change and protecting the natural environment for years, but death is not carbon neutral.
Cremation requires large amounts of fuel and produces a significant amount of fuel air pollution. Traditional burials, in which a body is embalmed and buried in caskets that are not completely degradable, can leak dangerous chemicals into the air and formaldehyde into the soil. To this end, Green-Wood already offers more traditional ‘green’ funerals, using all-natural caskets and omit embalming.
Human composting is a natural next step, Joshi said, especially for those who might have already wanted a green burial.
“[People who are interested] are very interested in the cycle of life, and they really want to have a more direct ceremony that honors that,” she said. “By returning the body directly to the earth, by being part of the earth, people will feel that connection.”
It is also a space saver. Green-Wood has nearly 600,000 “permanent residents” spread across its 478 acres, and space for traditional burials and mausoleums is ultimately limited. Joshi said Green-Wood is still selling land every day and will continue to do so for at least another decade.
But to secure the cemetery’s long-term future, it must explore alternatives that “take up less real estate,” she said.
“They allow us to make this a home for more people than a traditional funeral,” she said, comparing it to the city’s efforts to create density to provide more housing for living residents.
“It’s the same kind of strategy that we have to adopt here because we don’t want to be just a museum or a historical monument,” Joshi said. “We want to be an active cemetery for future generations.”
Joshi said she was prepared for some pushback when Green-Wood started exploring human composting. But the reception so far has been surprisingly warm.
“I was surprised to hear that more people were absolutely excited and asking, ‘Where can I sign up?’” she said. “We have an untapped market here in New York. We live in a city where real estate and density are the two things we consistently fight, and to give people an option to have a permanent home here, where we have limited space, I think it’s important for New Yorkers.”
It has not yet been decided what exactly will happen to the finished compost. All of Green-Wood’s green burials take place in one meadow, the Cedar Dell, with no individual headstones.
Joshi noted that the cemetery may adopt a similar strategy for spreading human compost, but said they still want people to have a choice about where they end up, perhaps at the base of a specific tree. State law requires the compost to be used in cemeteries.
There will be no gravestones, which she likened to spreading ashes – the deceased is not in one specific place, but spread out in a meaningful location.
“I think the most important thing is that it gives the family you leave behind a place where they can acknowledge that your remains are there and remember you through that,” Joshi said. “Not through a traditional monument or a gravestone, but through a place.”
The funeral industry is highly regulated, and human composting rules already exist in New York. Before Green-Wood can officially start offering it, it must work with the state Department of Cemeteries and the Department of Health to ensure all regulations are met, and all personnel involved will receive special training.
Green-Wood expects to make human composting an official option in early 2027, Joshi said. For now, interested Brooklynites can do that contact The cemetery’s memorial counselors will be put on a waiting list online so that they will be contacted as soon as the service becomes available and specific plans can be made.
Editor’s note: A version of this story originally appeared in Brooklyn Paper. Click here to see the original story.
Related stories
Email tips@brownstoner.com with further comments, questions or tips. Follow Brownstoner further X And Instagramand like us further Facebook.
#GreenWood #debuts #human #composting #funerals