New Howard County facility brings human composting to the East Coast

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Maryland is now home to the largest human composting facility. Human composting, also known as natural organic reduction, only became legal in Maryland 2 years ago. Howard County community reporter Dennis Valera takes us to the facility in Elkridge and tells us why some people are already lining up for this kind of burial.

[00:00:22]It looks like a vault you'd see in a bank, but inside is some organic mulch, wildflowers. It's actually where Earth Funeral will place a body to turn it into soil. It's something Steven Speece's wife chose to do. She was very nature oriented. When she found Earth Funeral, she said, "I think that's the way I want to go." And it's something Speece is looking to do, too, wanting to skip on being inside of a coffin. It removed and kept in a little box for the rest of eternity.

[00:00:49]Um that's not right.

[00:00:53]Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, let's put the dust back in the ground to to help other things grow. Earth Funeral's Elkridge facility has space for 126 vessels. The process takes 30 days when someone's placed inside. Tom Harris, the company CEO, says the technology only accelerates what is a natural process.

[00:01:11]The result is a nutrient-rich soil. It's a more environmentally friendly option compared to traditional funeral burials and cremation. You have something that is much more accessible, in our opinion, than cremation or cremation rites. And you can keep this soil. Um you can plant this soil. Maybe it's a potted plant.

[00:01:27]Maybe it's a memorial garden. Maybe it's a larger um tree. This is Earth Funeral's first facility on the East Coast, having others in Washington and Nevada. Harris says it helps make their services accessible. Families who've wished to choose this have had to fly loved ones to uh the West Coast, and that incurs costs, that incurs complexity. And we believe if you resonate with this option, you should be able to do it locally. That's something Speece is grateful for, even while his wife had to be taken out west when she went through the process. To be laid in that rich soil, surrounded by wildflowers.

[00:01:59]I can't think of a thing she would have wanted more than that.

[00:02:03]Reporting on your corner in Elkridge, I'm Dennis Felton for WJZ.