From Dust to Dust...or to Soil: Katrina Spade and the Recompose Vision for an Eco-Friendlier Death Industry

Katrina Spade: [00:00:00] I had this nightmare, recurring nightmare that I would talk about this idea for a long time, even kind of get paid to talk about it, like, and then would never actually make it available to the world. That was, that's like what drives me, I guess, if you had to. If you had to know,

Paul Shapiro: welcome to the Business for Good podcast to show where we spotlight companies making money by making the world a better place.

I'm your host, Paul Shapiro, and if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the world's most pressing problems, then this is the show for you. Hello friends, and welcome to the 73rd episode of The Business for Good Podcast. You know, the only thing I don't like about this episode is that it took us 73 episodes before getting to the death industry.

It's a topic that affects every single one of us, but few of us ever talk about it for fear of violating some taboo. Well, dear Westner, today we are going to talk about. If you listen to episode 71 with Donny Kirkendal of The Better Meco, you may recall that a [00:01:00] listener named Roger from Sydney, Australia actually requested this topic.

And Roger, I'm so glad that you did because I've wanted to do something on the business of death for a very long time. Of course, everyone dies and for nearly all of humanity's time as a species, most of the time upon our death, the nutrients in our bodies were returned to the soil to help foster new. In more modern times though, we've begun trying to preserve our bodies with everything from formaldehyde to hermetically sealed caskets inside of concrete liners in the ground, or we just burn our corpses in one final act of pollution.

Well, Katrina Spade is on a mission to offer a better way to deal with human corpses, and it involves a process that's called natural organic reduction. It's essentially a fancy way of saying that she's invented a method of accelerated composting of your. Rather than cremating your corpse, which involves substantial pollution and rather than a burial, which typically means sealing your body off from nature, Katrina wants to turn your body into healthy, rich soil within just one month.

After founding [00:02:00] Recompose Katrina helped change laws in three states, now Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, to allow her method of natural organic reduction and has already opened an operational human composting facility in Seattle. How cool. In addition to dozens of human compost already completed, they have nearly 1000 paying customers who have already pre-ordered their own composting.

Just in the same way, you might pre-order a plot in a. So far, Recompose has raised about 12 million from investors, including Sci-fi author Margaret Atwood, and is just getting started in their effort to empower you to give yourself back to the planet when you are done with your body. I love this idea and I love this episode, and I hope you will too.

Katrina, welcome to the Business for Good Podcast.

Katrina Spade: Thank you so much for having me.

Paul Shapiro: Great to be talking with you. I am so eager to talk with you for a number of reasons, but you were recommended by a listener of the show, and so congratulations on being so popular that you're getting recommended to podcasts by [00:03:00] people who just really

Katrina Spade: love your company.

That's awesome to hear and thank you out there, whoever that was. I really appreciate

Paul Shapiro: it. Very cool. There's so much that I want to talk about here because people don't really talk about death that much. It's kind of a taboo topic and we are gonna un taboo eyes it today, including creating that word, but we're gonna make it a little bit more palatable to talk about.

And so before we talk about what you are doing, let me just ask you, Katrina, like why is this even a problem? Like what is wrong with how we treat the dead today?

Katrina Spade: Well, let's see. Where can I start? Really high level problem with the way we think about death today is that we don't think about it very often in this culture.

You know, it's easy to get busy and think about something else, but I think when we do consider that we're all mortal beings can really lead to living our lives a lot more purposefully and, and with a lot more intention. And gosh, at the very least, it certainly leads me to appreciate each and every day that I'm alive.

So I'd say [00:04:00] first and foremost, we just need to think and talk about death more than we currently do.

Paul Shapiro: Okay, so let's talk about it. This is your chance to A, actually talk about it. So what happens when some , Oh, that

Katrina Spade: was, that was it. No, that was a thing. Just kidding. Yeah. So the second thing that's wrong with, with Destiny today.

And I'm speaking mostly about the United States. When I say we here, just to be clear, is that when you die, you really have only two choices for your body, and one is cremation and one is conventional burial. And by the way I'm saying conventional, not traditional, very on purpose because, or the way we bury folks today in the US with embalming.

Concrete grave liner and a big fancy casket in a cemetery. That's not necessarily a traditional way, but it is very much the conventional way

Paul Shapiro: now. Okay. So people are getting embalmed, meaning they have formaldehyde pumped into their veins to keep them looking good. Right. So you can have like an [00:05:00] open casket funeral or something like that?

Katrina Spade: Yeah, I mean, I would just hesitate to say that's the only way you could have an open casket funeral, but it's sold as sort of the best way to have an open casket or a viewing and embalming was. Invented in modern embalming was invented in the time of the Civil War in the us. Couple of enterprising young men on the battlefield actually realized they could make a good deal of money by pre-selling the service of embalming to soldiers who were afraid that they might die on the battlefield.

Rightly so. And by pre-selling, it said, Don't worry if you die. We'll, embalm. It was arsenic at the time, not Formalde high that they used, but Will Embalming will send you back to your families up north. And that might be not a bad reason to use the process of embalming to give families like one last time to to see a person they love.

But it became just commonplace here. And part of the reason why is because Lincoln was [00:06:00] involved when he died and was taken on a 16 city tour by train his. And like you could just imagine the marketing power that, that that sort of created and, and so the US funeral industry just made embalming the standard.

Wow. So

Paul Shapiro: how long does that last? So if I have a relative who dies and you know, her body is embalmed, like is it enough to last for 16 city tours or is it lasting for months? Like how long is this stuff actually preserving

Katrina Spade: the. I'm fairly certain that Lincoln's body was embalmed a number of times. They had to sort of like redo the process in order to keep the, the tour going.

I have to be honest with you, I don't know how long typical embalming would last. I think it depends on, on the strength of the chemicals and the quality of the ground, the moisture and the ground, for example, where the person is buried. But I would say that the, for me, the question has always been why would we eal.[00:07:00]

So

Paul Shapiro: in addition to the embalming Katrina, you know, you talk about concrete liners. I presume the, the caskets today are, are they like hermetically sealed? Like how much oxygen is getting in there to enable decomposition? Like if you open up a casket from somebody who died a year ago, where you still going to see them in there?

Katrina Spade: Well, again, it's gonna depend. I mean, yes, there's caskets that seal really well and that are sold and advertised that way, which again, I'd like to just. Poke at that a little bit and point out that conventional burial has been focused for hundreds of years now, or a couple hundred years on preserving the corpse.

And that's a very interesting concept and like I think a good one to sort of ask the big why. Right? So, No, I think in general it's safe to say that a, an embalmed body would take a long time to fully decompose, and a lot of the reason for that is just as you pointed out, that it's inside a casket that's not getting a lot of [00:08:00] oxygen and that it's typically that casket is inside of a concrete liner as well

Paul Shapiro: in the book The World Without Us.

Uh, this author, Alan Weisman talks about this process and my recollection is that basically what happens in the absence of oxygen, Is that the body, uh, will reify into like a soup. And then usually they put these like little plastic discs underneath your eyelids to keep your eyes closed for the funeral so that it looks like you're sleeping.

And then, so if you were to open up a casket, like basically you would see of like a modern, conventional, varied person, you would see like two auto plastic discs floating on top of a, of a soup of all of your, your body, which is of course, uh, pretty repulsive to con.

Katrina Spade: Well, first of all, that is so wild that you brought up the world without us because when I got my big question at the end of the talk, that was gonna be the one of the books I brought up.

But what's funny is that I forgot that he even mentions, I had no idea. He, I guess it's [00:09:00] been a while since I read it. I forgot that he even mentioned burial. So I was gonna bring it up for all sorts of other good reasons, but.

Paul Shapiro: It is a great book, so I'm glad you're going to recommend it. So you're, We'll, we'll talk spoil alert.

I'm going

Katrina Spade: to recommend it very soon.

Paul Shapiro: We will not talk about what the book is about until the end of the interview. How about that? That sounds great. Yes,

Katrina Spade: but it's a great book. I'm not trying to steer the conversation or anything, but I wanna say that, that though embalming is a practice that we should kind of reconsider.

I. There are cultures for whom it's really important part of, you know, a funeral service. And, and I definitely don't. I mean this, I've come to believe this so strongly, which, which is that really no matter what you choose when you die, it should be an intentional choice. And embalmings not for me. I'm not interested in being involved, I'm not interested in being buried in the ground, but there's lots of people who do want that.

And I think as long as, as we're all given all of the information, all of the choices, Then there's, there's kind of no wrong answer then, and that's [00:10:00] weird because the reason I'm doing this work is because it's much more environmentally beneficial than cremation or conventional burial. But also I drive a car that's not electric.

And so it would be extremely hypocritical to say, If you truly wanna be embalmed, you should have that. Or it would be hypocritical to say, you.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I, you know, I think all of us are, are probably hypocritical in terms of proclaiming certain things about ourselves and then we act in other ways. And, you know, of course you, you're, you're naming one of them, but I don't think we should have a, a puritanical witness test here.

I do think we should try to do the best that we can, even if we're not gonna be perfect. And when. We die. I guess the question is, do we want one final act of pollution? You know, we've been polluting, uh, our whole lives in a variety of ways, and do we want to have our parting legacy to be, or having like a, a tree cut down so we can be put into a casket and have all of that happen?

Or with cremation, which you just mentioned, which is also a really popular option. What's the problem with it? Is what's the concern about being cremated, if [00:11:00] any?

Katrina Spade: Cremation is fascinating, I think, and in part because of. Rate at which it's rising here in the us. So I think it was 2017 that cremation became the most popular or more popular than burial here in the us.

So the most popular form of disposition, and it's expected by the funeral industry to rise really quickly because they're seeing fewer and fewer people wanna be buried. More people think number one, more of us are transient. So, Family plot is much less likely to hold that meaning than it used to. Cause you're not, cuz you're gonna live somewhere else.

So having, do I have to get back to that place in Minnesota to see my, my family plot and what if I can't do, I have to feel guilty about it, et cetera. And I've heard from a lot of people too, like it feels like a waste of perfectly airable land. Right. So, For those reasons and for cost reasons. Cremation is rapidly becoming by far the most popular in the us.

I asked myself like about eight or nine years ago now, like, do I, do I wanna be cremated? I mean, it's kind of the [00:12:00] default for those of us who don't have the family plot or the religious or cultural reasoning for burial. And it felt just like kind of wasteful. And I don't even mean the fossil fuels, which it does use, There's about 540 pounds of co2 I think that are emitted per crem.

And it usually is using fossil gas, aka natural gas. But it was more like, gosh, if when I die I'll have something left in my body, like some modicum of, of nutrients, right, That is left when I finally actually die. And so wouldn't I rather give that back if I could? And so yes, there's a pollution aspect and, and there's also this kind of like, what do I want that final gesture to?

Paul Shapiro: I thought of the same thing, Katrina, like, I think that, you know, I've been taking nutrients, uh, for a long time. My whole life. I've been, you know, consuming. And I guess the question is, you know, do I want to give back? And so in my will, I have a request in there. I guess it's not even a request. This is my dying wishes.

So hopefully [00:13:00] it'll just be a demand that I would have a green burial. But I was unaware until I learned about your company. There is a difference between what you are doing and green burial. So before we get into what Recompose is doing, like what am I asking for in my will? What does green burial even mean?

Katrina Spade: I'm glad you brought that up, because sometimes I launch as I did today with cremation versus conventional burial because it's much more common. But green burial is something that's been practiced for millennia. Definitely could call that traditional burial because it's been practiced forever. It's still practiced in much of the world, and definitely practiced by different religious groups like Jews and Muslims.

Both practiced a form of green burial, and the basic concept is no casket, maybe a pine box, but definitely no metal casket, no concrete liner, and certainly no embalming. It's body into the earth, You know, let the earth take you. And a lot of times if you look up for a green [00:14:00] cemetery or a natural burial ground or these are some of the things you might Google, you'll find talk of pairing that with conservation land, which I think is a absolutely stunning concept where once you've buried a body in the ground, it has certain legal rights and so you're pairing the body and the ground with a way to conserve that.

And then also you'll see things like you might be buried in a beautiful shroud or a wicker basket casket or, and certainly typically not six feet down, but just three feet down. So that's more likely that oxygen and flora and fauna can get at you and help your body break down. So I'm a huge fan. I think that what you've chosen is beautiful and actually created recomposed because I was so inspired by natural burial and.

I realize though, that that still takes up quite a bit of land. So what's the natural burial equivalent for our urban centers? That was the the beginning question for this work.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. All right, well, we're gonna get to what [00:15:00] Recompose is doing, but first I just gotta ask you, have you heard of Sky Burial?

Like what the Zoros do? I have? Yeah. All right, so tell us about that. Because if I could have done that, I would've chosen it, but sadly, there does not appear to be any Sky Burial facilities anywhere within my reach. So what do the Zoro Austrians.

Katrina Spade: Maybe someone out there on your podcast needs to make this their big plan in life.

But, um, Very good. I hope so. I mean, it's another kind of beautiful concept in my mind where, and I hope I, I get this right, but bodies are placed out in nature and the expectation is for sky barrier for the tians that vultures will eat the flesh and then the bones are kind of tidied up and, and taken care of in another area of the facility, if you will.

And then there's, I think there's probably. Sky burials where it's not necessarily vultures. It might be other, you know, other animals that come and, and pick you apart. But I think, I mean, how can you not really love that concept at some level? Right? It's

Paul Shapiro: [00:16:00] beautiful. I love the idea of, of having some animals eating me and getting sustenance.

I would be so thrilled for that. And I figure that's pretty much what has happened for nearly all of history. Like, you know, for the most part, like before civiliz. I do think there's some evidence of humans varying their debt, actually, even before civilization. But for the most part, it seems like you die, you're left on the ground and scavengers come and and ravage your corpse, right?

Yeah.

Katrina Spade: And you know, today it is legal, I think most places here to arrange for a water burial or a sea, a sea burial, if you will. And if you think about that, I mean the end result is probably gonna be some form of, uh, water. Eating you in the end. So that can be arranged. I don't, I wish I knew more of the details of how you do it, but if you Google water burial, you should be able to find something out.

Or sea burial. Sea

Paul Shapiro: burial. Interesting. Yeah. And there is like also like a, a so-called water cremation, which I know is different from what you're talking about, where they basically, I think they use like a lie in the water to decompose your body quickly under underwater. Isn't that.

Katrina Spade: Yes, [00:17:00] that's correct.

Alkaline hydrolysis, it's called.

Paul Shapiro: Well, anyway, Yeah, I wouldn't mind being thrown out to see if I thought like some sharks would get me or something. But I, I wonder like, is it bad if your clothing is on them? If they're gonna eat your clothing ? I don't know. It seems like, it seems like a logistical issue there.

So we've talked about all these other ways that people are dealing with corpses, right? So they're bearing them with caskets and from Malahide. They're cremating. A small portion of people were just letting vultures, you know, gorge on their corpses. But what is it that you're trying to do? You talk about needing land, you talk about wanting to have an urban solution for dealing with the dead.

So what is it that Recomposed is actually doing that's different from what we've talked about? I

Katrina Spade: wanted to, I know there's I some importance that I, I can't even articulate it in connecting to nature again, when you die, we are part of nature, even though it doesn't feel like it on a day to day basis. And so, like I said, natural burial where body goes directly in the ground always felt to me like the most beautiful choice, and yet it [00:18:00] takes land.

And so I was lucky enough when I was in grad school for architecture and thinking about mortality just because that's what I was doing. I don't have a great reason for you. And thinking about the design of our funeral systems, my friend, Called me on the phone and asked me if I knew about this practice that farmers have used for decades composting livestock.

And it's a way for farmers to take an animal carcass and recycle it so they can, the nutrients can go back to their land. And it's been practiced in the US for a long time and really well researched actually by agricultural institutions, which is great. And I thought, Well, it was a little epiphany, of course, you know, like if you can compost a cow, you can probably compost a human.

And so I began looking into that process. And the difference between that and natural burial is that you're creating the perfect environment and the perfect ratio of nitrogen and carbon materials. Just like when you compost, right? Your greens and your browns [00:19:00] inside a vessel. It's highly regulat or not regulated, highly controlled.

And you've created, you're creating almost what's ex the exact same environment that's on the forest floor as dead leaf litter and sticks. And your eran chipmunk are decomposing and creating top soil. But you're creating that inside of what we call a vessel, which is a fancy word for container. And so the end product of that vessel, This rich nutrient rich soil that can be used to regenerate the land.

But the difference between burial is that vessel gets used again. So it's a little bit more like cremation in that this is a process that returns a material to the family after it's done, but it's a lot more like burial and that it's really just relying on the natural cycles to make it happen.

Paul Shapiro: So to be clear, Katrina, tell me what I'm getting wrong, if anything.

So somebody dies, they, that corpse is then brought to you at Recompose and they go into what's essentially a [00:20:00] reusable casket, so to speak. So it's some vessel that they're put in and what else is put in there with them to help them decompose? Because my understanding is you're putting things in there that help to accelerate that decomposition.

So they would actually decompose much faster than even if they were just buried in the ground without any hasket at all. Is that right? Yeah, so

Katrina Spade: when we're trying to recreate that forest floor, we are using a mixture of plant material and primarily what we use are wood chips, alfalfa and straw. And that's something that we've come up with over the years as kind of the perfect recipe.

So we lay the body, It's less like a casket. I'm gonna try to describe it for you. Imagine a can of soup on its side. Okay, but the can of soup, I've

Paul Shapiro: always wanted to die and go into a can of

Katrina Spade: soup. Exactly. This is just to get for you, that cylinder, that can of soup is four feet tall and eight feet long. So you have a cylinder really that is eight feet long and four feet in diameter.[00:21:00]

Okay. Can you kind of picture that?

Paul Shapiro: I am picturing it and, and there are photos on your website, which we're gonna link to as well for people who want to literally see it with their own eyes, but yes. So a, a long canister that's kind of told. And I'm, I'm ready to get in. Okay. So first

Katrina Spade: we're gonna lie, we're gonna, um, lay a bed of wood chips, alfalfa and straw, into that vessel.

Then we lay the body on top of that bed, and then we cover the body with more of the same. So before actually when someone dies, they call recompose. We have a direct number and we have all the staff that can take you and your family through the whole process. And so after we pick up the body, we lay it onto a bed of this material, inside of the vessel, cover it with more of the same.

I like to say it's like cocooned in this plant material. And then over the next month we're providing only oxygen via basic aeration. So it's not even like pure oxygen. We're just, we're just running a basic fan system, and that is providing oxygen to the vessel and [00:22:00] making sure that the microbes that are on us right now as we speak, Paul, they're on the wood chips, alfalfa and straw, they're just in the air.

Those microbes start breaking down plant material and body. And they're fed by the carbon and nitrogen in our bodies and in the plant material, and they're fueled by that air. So oxygen is

Paul Shapiro: key. So is it all microbial or are there like, you know, do you have like the red wiggle or worms in there? Like what is it that it's actually doing, the breakdown?

Is it all just microbial wife? Pretty sure

Katrina Spade: the, the worms would, wouldn't make it. The temperatures that get created by these microbial communities are north of 131 degrees Fahn. It gets really hot, really fast. It's quite, quite incredible. I've, I mean, now I've done this many times, but the first few times this happened to, to watch the temperature recordings we had going in our early pilots, and to see a body that's cooled, been in refrigerated storage for a little bit, go in with cool plant material and see temperatures rise to about 150 [00:23:00] degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of one to two days.

That has always been. Oh man, it's a little bit of a spiritual moment for me. You know, it really is quite incredible to watch that that happen

Paul Shapiro: and evidence that it's working.

Katrina Spade: You know, it's pretty exactly the evidence that it's working. If you don't have those temperatures, you can't be sure that a microbes are happy, and B, you're destroying any harmful pathogen.

So it's actually a really important piece of the biological and regulatory side of things. We have to ensure and record that we're hitting those temperatures for safety.

Paul Shapiro: So let me ask you then, Katrina, you're decomposing the bones as well as just the flesh, right? We're

Katrina Spade: decomposing the bones as well, though.

We do have stage after the 30 days where we, if there's larger bone fragments left, we break those down. There's a similar process in cremation where the larger bone fragments are broken down and then they keep decomposing, and in the end, what we have left is this nutrient rich soil that families can use or can donate to our conservation.

But one more thing. If [00:24:00] you have a titanium hip or some other non-organic, our staff screen that out after the soil is made.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. I, I have a screw in my knee. I don't know if it's titanium or not, but I presume, uh, when I am, uh, all, all consumed by these microbes there that your staff is gonna need to take that out of there.

Katrina Spade: Either way, we'll, we'll take it out. It doesn't belong there, .

Paul Shapiro: Okay. Uh, okay. Well let me ask you then. We're still finding skeletons from like millions of years ago, right? And. Like Lucy, the Hoed ancestor who lived so long ago, her skeleton did not totally decompose. So like what has happened? What? What's happening?

Or I should say, why doesn't this process occur all the time in nature? You know, what you're able to do in 30 days, millions of years in nature, wasn't able to accomplish.

Katrina Spade: Well, millions of years in nature would accomplish it if there were enough moisture in the soil. And what happens is if a skeleton or a bone, for that matter [00:25:00] dries out, it can't start its decomposition process again.

So you can imagine in many situations in the world, even if it's not an arid place like a desert, but definitely it would happen in a desert. If you have the right conditions in the soil and the skeleton dries out, it'll be preserved. So we. 60% moisture content in our process, and that is critical for the bone decomposition and the general decomposition for that matter.

Paul Shapiro: Fascinating. All right, so you know, I know Katrina, that you started this really, not even as a company, but that you were, as you mentioned, studying this in school and writing about it, and then you decided to. Found your own nonprofit organization, the Urban Death Project. So what was it that led you to decide, rather than running a nonprofit organization devoted to creating more eco-friendly death rituals, that you actually wanted to start a for-profit company?

Katrina Spade: The main reason I started the company was because I [00:26:00] had gotten to a place where, We learned a lot with the nonprofit Urban Death Project. We learned number one, that this wasn't just an idea that my best friends and my parents thought was cool . Like I really thought that for a while when I was first doing the work.

Just seemed a little out there for the general public, and I've learned that there's a huge community of people that are really interested and excited by this idea. We realized there was for black and better Turmo, there was a market for it, and then we also did a lot of the initial research and early proof of concept.

Western Carolina University's forensic department and a lot of just early figuring out what might work. But when it came down to it, I had this nightmare recurring nightmare that I would talk about this idea for a long time, even kind of get paid to talk about it, like, and then would never actually make it available to the world.

That was, that's like what drives me, I guess, if you had to, If you had to know. And so I realized that we [00:27:00] needed. A real, quite a lot of capital to get started to really build a facility that's doing this work and to really make it available to, you know, more than just a tiny fraction of people. So I looked into, but I also was really concerned about what does it mean to start a for profit company?

Do you lose all the values that you set out with? When I was doing the work, a nonprofit seemed to me to be an easier way to hold to the mission, hold to the vision. But I was very lucky to get connected with some wonderful advisors who showed me that you can start a company and hold onto the values and the vision.

And so started Recomposed in 2017 and it was the right decision. But like I said, it took me some real thinking and, and mostly took me finding the right advisors.

Paul Shapiro: How did you fund the company Initial.

Katrina Spade: The first thing I did was I, I had a seed slash community fund round, which was [00:28:00] $690,000 raised, and that was before the process was legal.

So by the way, this process wasn't legal. , just so you know. And so we had to, One of the things we had to consider early on was what our strategy would be to make it legal. It's a state by state process. Every funeral, every state has different funeral. So we actually did a rundown of which states we wanted to start with, and today this process is legal in three states and there's bills in several more, and it's looking really good.

For example, in California that their fingers crossed will it will be legal there within the next six months or so.

Paul Shapiro: What are the three states where it's

Katrina Spade: legal? Washington State, where I live and where Recompose is based Oregon and. Interesting.

Paul Shapiro: I wonder if there is a tight connection between states with right to dialogues and states that will be first legalizing your method of this type of a, uh,

Katrina Spade: burial.

I think so. And you know, actually there's probably a pretty good [00:29:00] connection between this method in marijuana too. Weirdly enough. Yeah. Interesting.

Paul Shapiro: Well, all of this might be combined, you know, the person who's dying might, might need some. So that's, uh, super interesting. We had on Elizabeth Mul, who's the founder and CEO of Deep I.

A company finding really cool and innovative ways to store nuclear waste. And one of the points that she made is that it's prohibited by federal law for any private corporation to permanently dispose of nuclear waste. And so all of these nuclear facilities, both for you know, weapons and for for power, have really big stores of nuclear waste sitting around that they just keep at like in barrels basically.

Or in pools. And what she had to do was, she is trying to change the law in Congress, but she basically invented a way that you can store it, where it be safe for millennia, but also retrievable so it's not permanently being disposed of. It's pretty interesting that you, you both started companies where your entire business model was based on something that at least initially was illegal to even do.

Katrina Spade: [00:30:00] I know, looking back, it's kind of a little bit, I don't know the word. I'm gonna say ballsy, but it's an extra lift. But I mean, to be totally honest, Well, it certainly didn't slow us down. And it also, it's, there's a nice connection with when you're trying to legalize something that, by the way, in our case, is a real bipartisan question.

It's about choice when someone dies and it's been surprisingly not just an environmental kind of niche idea. We've seen really broad support. And so then as we are getting people to write in letters to their legislators and educating legislators about what we're doing. We're also typically getting pressed.

That's typically quite positive around the issue. And it's this nice, um, union of policy change and media and outreach and this sort of growing momentum of people that know and want this process. So it's not to say it wasn't difficult or isn't difficult, but it does also have extra benefits beyond just changing the.

In

Paul Shapiro: terms of the changed laws, Katrina, [00:31:00] are they in direct response to what Recompose is doing or are there other companies out there that are also seeking to do the same thing that are lobbying for these changes? Thus

Katrina Spade: far? Recompose has led all policy change, but we have some, We definitely have some competitors, and I'm sure they're thrilled about the policy change.

So, but they, I haven't seen any of them put a lot of effort towards the change yet. We have, I think it's safe to say Recomposed has like a really strong, the strongest community following, and so it's not, it's pretty awesome to see, like when there's a bill about what is, by the way, called natural organic reduction by the law Noor Natural Organic Reduction.

When there's a bill that comes up, it matters when 200 people write in. Their legislator and it's all, it surprised me cuz I was a little bit cynical and thought that that wouldn't do much. But when you have 200 people writing in that yes they really, really want this and then you have basically no one writing in that they would like the [00:32:00] bill to not pass.

Cuz I mean, even if you don't want it for yourself, there's not a whole lot of people who are like, This should not exist that I've met. So anyway, it's really powerful. So Recomposed leads those effort. There

Paul Shapiro: obviously has been some religious objections, for example, to the right to die laws. Are there any religious objectors to natural organic reduction?

Katrina Spade: Yes, there are. Catholics have been opposed in several states, they've sometimes rescinded their technical opposition, which I take to mean they don't have enough bandwidth or care to really fight it, but they wanna kind of put a flag in the sand that says, We don't like. But we haven't, knock on wood, we haven't yet seen the Catholic opposition A, have very much behind it, but B, really stop legislators from saying like, Yeah, this should be another choice for those who want it.

No one's trying to take away your Catholic burial if that's what you want. So

Paul Shapiro: you're not yet at the point of mandating natural organic production. We're not there yet. . [00:33:00] Ok. That's next year. Got it. Yes. So the camel's, The camel's news is under the tent in three states at least. All. Uh, actually, speaking of sleep slippery slopes, uh, there is a, a good segue here to asking about the Handmaid's Tale because I do understand that Margaret Atwood, the author of Handmaid's Tale, and also, uh, my favorite of her books, ORs and Creek, is an investor of yours.

So tell me about that. How did you even get in touch with her? Why is she supporting you and what's her role with Recompose?

Katrina Spade: Well, I wish her role was bigger, but she has been fantastic in her small role, which was, so I think it's ORs and. Which is in that book. Tell me if I'm wrong, you'll know. They mention God's Gardeners, which is like a group of people that compost things, including themselves maybe.

Paul Shapiro: Oh, that's awesome. I like the book for a variety of reasons, but one of which is that she talks about growing meat without the chickens there. Uh, I don't know if you remember this, and they're the chick nos where they basically have, you can grow meat without animals, which is a passion of mine. And uh, [00:34:00] so in her book, it's kind of a dys.

Thing to do, whereas I view it actually as a little bit more utopian. But anyway, uh, so God's gardeners, they're out there. Tell us about these gardeners here.

Katrina Spade: Okay, well that's all I can tell you about Margaret Atwoods, God's Gardeners. But it became a hashtag at some point on Twitter. Cause she's very active on Twitter, and I think it was back in 2016.

No, no, sorry. It must have been 2015. Cause I ran a Kickstarter as the Urban Death Project where we raised $90,000 for people all over the world and someone tagged Margaret and said in Twitter, however you tagged things in Twitter and said, Margaret, look at this Kickstarter, it hashtag God's gardeners.

And Margaret at would shared it with the world, which I thought was amazing. And then a another year or two pass, and I got a Google alert. Led me to a Forbes article where Margaret was asked what, how she invested. I think it was a high net worth investor questionnaire, like a little interview, and she said, Well, I would invest in human composting [00:35:00] except it's a nonprofit.

So when I started Recomposed, I remembered that and I wrote her publishing house cause that's the only address I could find. I wrote her publishing house a letter and said, Margaret, I don't know if you remember this, but you said you wanted to invest in human composting and I've started a company we're raising a seed round, and she said, I'd absolutely love to invest and you're welcome to use my name.

Paul Shapiro: Very cool. How, how did you find out how to write her? You emailed her, did you have her personal email

Katrina Spade: address? I wrote a, like a snail mail letter to her publishing house and they passed it on. Amazing. Wow. Which was really

Paul Shapiro: cool. You go in old school here. Very nice. I went old

Katrina Spade: school and I knew it was a little bit of a ridiculous long shot, but I've gotten in touch with kind of a lot of people that way and had incredible, like, incredible advice and advisors and, and long friendships because of it.

So seems to be working. Okay.

Paul Shapiro: That's very cool. Well, I'll give you a, a quick tip that I often use, so I don't know if you use Chrome as your, um, as your browser, but can get a free extension on it called Hunter. [00:36:00] And so then you can go to any webpage and you just click on this extension. It shows you all the publicly available email addresses associated with that domain name.

That's very cool. So I don't know if you could find her email it that way or not. I don't know, but I use it to find people's emails quite often actually. And I find Hunter to be a really good free extens. All right, Katrina, let's get down to the actual dollars and cents here because, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, All right, well, I was gonna do a green burial, but maybe I need to do natural organic reduction here.

What's it gonna cost me? So if I want to, uh, if I wanna strike a deal with you, and presumably I, you know, I live in California. Let's say California's gonna legalize this. I wanna tell my wife, Yo, I wanna make sure that I get Noord here rather than, uh, g Beed. What's it gonna cost her? Amy, I'll start

Katrina Spade: by telling you that.

Let's see, I think we've had. Over 10 folks come from California to Seattle where our current location is to undergo this process. So we actually have folks from out of state. 10.

Paul Shapiro: 10, 10 corpses. How many corpses have you composed or [00:37:00] recomposed? Just over 60. Okay. All right. So sorry to interrupt you, So, So you're at 10.

10 Californians. Hopefully by the time I'm ready, it'll be for more than that, and I don't wanna be the 11th, but let's just say, you know, we're thinking about it. The goal, of

Katrina Spade: course, is, is that we're in more places than just Seattle, and so my goal right now is we'll get to it all, but we're raising money in order to build facilities in other places, including California.

Right now, our price is set at $5,500, and just to give you a sense, that's $5,500. To give you a sense of the prices of other funeral choices, a cremation can range wildly because you might get a very, very basic direct cremation that's just probably, you should be able to get it for about a thousand dollars.

That's just the cremation process and then box of ashes back. But the average cremation includes some sort of service and a few other products and services in the us and the average range is, is about $6,000 for crem. [00:38:00] Conventional burial with a casket and embalming, I would wager you'd have a hard time finding for less than $15,000 and they go way up after that because you have to.

You might find on a website somewhere that you could get that for 6,000, but it probably doesn't take into account the plot at the cemetery. A lot of times the plot is separate. The casket and the service of the funeral home. So just to those of you out there, it's not easy to find this information, but I highly recommend that no matter what you choose, you really like look and then call a funeral home to fully understand the prices before.

You say yes to anything. Consumer rights around funeral stuff is pretty abysmal. And it's a combination of our hesitancy of talking about stuff and, and frankly like price shopping, funeral homes, because we're so freaked out when someone dies of course. And it's such a vulnerable time. But then there's also the funeral industry that has every reason to want it to be hard to find those prices.

So I will stop there, but, uh, $5,500 is, you could say, right there in the middle. And [00:39:00] for us, for recompose, it covers. Everything you need, so you call us when someone dies. That covers transportation within the Seattle area. It covers right now a virtual service with our services team, the transformation into soil, and then we facilitate either getting that soil back to you or we can donate it for you to conservation projects.

Paul Shapiro: How many of your customers I should say are doing this? Like what you just said, Somebody dies and then they call you? Or are they like, basically in the same way you might prepurchase a plot at a cemetery. Like can I, you know, Prepurchase my recomposition with you?

Katrina Spade: You sure can. If you go to our website, there is a planning ahead page that will walk you through the steps of purchasing and signing up for Preco compos.

Paul Shapiro: Ooh. Nice. I like it Prepo. Okay. All right.

Katrina Spade: That sounds good. Yeah. We've got about 900 folks that have signed up already to be, have our, their future death care with us. And that list is growing fast. We've done [00:40:00] not very much advertising around it, but we're excited that sort of like community interest has, has been spreading.

And so that list is growing and we have folks that are 20 years old that have signed up and are paying monthly.

Paul Shapiro: So that's what I was gonna ask. So you know, if I go to Preco, Compos, am I paying 5,500 bucks here? You sure are. Okay. So you have a 900 folks who have paid you $5,500 each

Katrina Spade: already? No, because some of them are on a monthly plan, so not everyone has, but we're, But it's, it's pretty great.

In terms of future revenue, future customers, it, it has a lot. But yeah, I mean, I think it is 85% of folks call us when someone dies. Like, meaning they didn't have a prepo plan with.

Paul Shapiro: I see. All right. Well, you know, at least that's some serious revenue though that you're getting there. So then, uh, the question is like, obviously you are a investor back company, as you mentioned, you've done a Kickstarter and you've done a more conventional equity round with investors also.

Like how much money has Recomposed race so far

Katrina Spade: doing math right now, we've raised just [00:41:00] about 12 million.

Paul Shapiro: So you've existed for about four years and, And you've raised 12 million so far? Yeah. I started with

Katrina Spade: a seed, which was technically our Series A one raised 690,000. Now you can check my math. Okay.

690,000. And then we did an A two after we'd legalized and in order to open this first facility, and that was 6.75 million. So I might be a little off and now I'm just. Getting started on our A three round and we're raising 15 million, and I've done just about four so far. But I wanna say Paul, what we're not is conventional when it comes to our race.

You mentioned conventional funding. It is investor funding and it's fairly different than your typical startup. We are equity and we are also providing 6% dividends accruing upon investment. And the reason we do that is because we're looking for long term [00:42:00] investors. We want people that are gonna stick with us for the long haul.

We don't have a specific timeframe or a specific plan for an exit. And so it's like very different than your typical company or startup. I. Yeah,

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. You don't see startups guaranteeing dividends or even suggesting that there might even be a possibility of dividends very often. So that is definitely non, uh, non-conventional in that sense.

But what's the use of funds? You know, you wanna raise all these millions of dollars, is it to build more of these facilities around? So you got one in Seattle, now you're gonna have one in California and Colorado and Oregon. Is that the, the use is just, um, creating more of these facilities? I mean, yeah,

Katrina Spade: there's two uses.

One is exactly what you just said. We're gonna build three more facilities in the next two years. And then we're also the funding will, it funds our expansion plan generally. So my goal, it's like we just wanna be where we're wanted, where there's people who want this process. It's not ideal when you're flying to it.

To us, it's not the worst thing. It it only reduces your carbon footprint by 25% if you fly from New [00:43:00] York. So we are saving, uh, every person who chooses recomposed will save a metric ton of carbon over conventional options. And if you also fly to us, that reduces that metric ton by about a quarter.

Paul Shapiro: I see.

All right. Well that is really riveting. I think there's a lot of people who will have an interest in this. I think not too many people really contemplate the process of what's gonna happen after they die. And I had thought, you know, the only thing that I would be interested in would just being like thrown in a hole basically.

I didn't want like a shroud or a casket or anything. I just wanted you. To provide some sustenance, but it sounds pretty interesting. So if folks are interested, let's say, first of all, not just in participating, since you can of course go to the Recomposed website, which we'll link to from our website, but if folks are interested in investing in your round, how do they get in touch with you?

Just through your website, Katrina?

Katrina Spade: Yeah, we have an invest page. It's www.recomposed.life, that's l i f e. And we have an investment page that gives you some of the information on [00:44:00] it. And then there's a invested recomposed.life web, sorry, email address.

Paul Shapiro: Okay, cool. Well now we're going to bring back new, what was old in our conversation here, and I'll ask you what uh, resources have been useful for you, Katrina.

I know the world without us obviously is on your mind, so tell us about that, why it's of relevance to what we're talking about, and any other resources that you think would be useful for folks who are inspired by your.

Katrina Spade: Okay. The World Without Us is a book about what would happen if humans just poof, disappeared one day, and what would happen to all the infrastructure that we've created over the past however many hundreds of years.

And it's speculative fiction. That's not, I don't know what you call it actually, It's not speculative fiction cuz it's not fiction, but it's like speculative non-fiction . And it's written by a Wiseman. And on the one hand it's bleak. The idea that what would happen to the nuclear plants, What would happen to.

New York City, but on the other hand, I found it incredibly just [00:45:00] comforting to, to think about nature taking back over and to know that like really with, if humans go away, the world will continue in in some form. So that's always been like a driving force, you know, or a comforting force for me. And I, it's beautifully written as well.

I

Paul Shapiro: loved the book and I've recommended it many times, but it was interesting because it's kind of like, instead of historical fiction, it's kind of like, um, Uh, future looking contemplation, I guess like speculation. And, you know, he basically says, you know, if humans stopped existing, what would happen one year from now, 10 years from now, a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, from, and a million years from now?

The question is like, will anything that we did be recognizable a million years from now to somebody who, let's say, comes and visits or a new civilization or whatever, And it was shocking to me that I really thought that things would be sturdier than they are. But 1 million years from now, apparently there's a little piece of trivia that you can use.

Apparently the only thing that'll be visible of human's existence, uh, would be Mount Rushmore. [00:46:00] It's like the wooden big thing that would still be there if we disappear. So I guess it takes a long time for mountains to erode, but everything else from the Hoover Dam to the Statue of Liberty and everything else would, would be long.

Okay, so finally then, Katrina, you have, you know, gone on this ride of starting your own nonprofit organization to then closing your nonprofit organization so you can start a for-profit company to achieve the mission of the nonprofit organization. You've raised millions of dollars to do this. You've changed laws in numerous states.

You have a lot left that you want to do and to accomplish with recompose, but I presume like many entrepreneurs, you probably think about other ideas that could also be of some use in the world. If you weren't doing Recomposed, or maybe I'll just say what you would recommend, anybody listening here who is interested in starting their own company, they have an idea, what do you think would be good for the world that you wish would exist?

Katrina Spade: Oh gosh. That is a lot of pressure right there. But here's what I'm gonna say instead, I don't know the [00:47:00] exact project or the exact idea, although I know they're all out there, and I highly recommend, if you haven't read it yet, you pick up Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. She wrote, Eat, Pray, Love as well.

You've probably heard of that. But big magic is the concept that every idea is out there. It's floating around on the ether, and sometimes it sticks to sticks to your face or sticks to your heart or whatever. And sometimes you're in the right place where you can grab onto it and you can move forward with it.

And you pair up and there you go. Are you in the idea of making something happen? And sometimes you don't have time for it, and so it crosses your mind and you might even spend a week thinking about. That idea and then it goes on to someone else. I just love that concept, partly because I've had many people tell me, Katrina, I thought about composting humans once.

And I say, That's awesome, . I know I'm not the first person who's caught of it, but I know I'm the one who's, you know, doing the most about it. But great, those ideas are out there. They're not owned by any of us. And like if you, but just like, [00:48:00] I don't know, be ready for one to hit you and then just see how it feels and then, I don't know.

A lot of things come together and you can run

Paul Shapiro: with. All right, well, we will include the link to Big Magic and the World Without Us and other things that we've talked about in here, including how you can get in touch with Recompose, whether you're interested in becoming a customer and or an investor in the show notes on the website Business for good podcast.com.

So Katrina, thanks so much for all your work and really appreciate what you're doing to try to help people, um, I guess not die with dignity, but be dead with dignity. So we appreciate. Thank

Katrina Spade: you so much, Paul. You really had a great time. Thanks for

Paul Shapiro: listening. We hope you found use in this episode. If so, don't keep it to yourself.

Please leave us a five star rating on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And as always, we hope you will be in the business of doing good.