What If Your Final Act Was Green?

By Sarah Mock, NM Healthy Soil Working Group

In the soil health world, it’s intuitive that when something dies, be it plant, animal, or fungi, returning it to the earth is not only an act of emotional closure –it’s physical too. That’s because, ecologically, returning the remains of living things to the soil closes a loop, ensuring that the materials that embodied a corn plant, a mesquite tree, or a beloved animal can help nourish and build the next generation of delicious crops, mighty trees, and precious creatures.

This is the cycle of life. But in New Mexico today, humans are limited in how we can be a part of it. 

For those contemplating their own or a a family member’s end-of-life plans, the options for after-death care are surprisingly limited here in the Land of Enchantment. While your body can be fire cremated, interred in a casket, or laid to rest in our state’s only certified natural burial ground, there are other age-old practices that have recently been gaining (or regaining) acceptance in some 14 states across the country. 

One increasingly popular option is Natural Organic Reduction (NOR), or what’s commonly called human composting. For gardeners, farmers, or plant-lovers everywhere, there’s much to like about this option. We spend our lives caring for the environment and nurturing our bodies with healthy foods only to end up surrounded by concrete, non-biodegradable caskets, and synthetic, even PFAS-containing fabrics and materials after we die. The idea that our body might instead become an integral part of the gardens, farms, forests, and grasslands we love sounds promising. However, it is not currently legal under New Mexico law to dispose of a body through the safe, existing methods of Natural Organic Reduction that are used in other states.

Another option is Alkaline Hydrolysis (AH), also called aquamation or water cremation, a low-energy (and low-emission) alternative to flame cremation. High-temperature cremation by fire is often seen as environmentally-friendly, given that it does not involve a casket, carcinogenic embalming fluids, or extensive land use. But the heating process still emits dangerous greenhouse gasses and can release pollutants into water and airways.

Aquamation, on the other hand, creates about 90% fewer emissions than flame cremation and requires just a dozen gallons of water to a few hundred. At the end of this quiet and gentle process, the sterile fluid that remains can also be used as fertilizer in some places. But alkaline hydrolysis is currently not an approved disposition method in New Mexico.

New Mexicans Deserve More Choices  

What we do with our bodies after we die is a very personal, and very sacred, decision. Given New Mexico’s diverse population and cultural traditions, green disposition methods like human composting or water cremation will not be right for everyone. For many, traditional burial, heat cremation, or even donating one’s body to science will be the right option.

But New Mexicans who want their final act to be green should have that choice as well. 

Some will opt for green disposition because they want to avoid waste from a gravesite that could, in the future, pollute the local water table. Some will choose these options because they don’t want a funeral worker to be exposed to toxic formaldehyde, the main embalming chemical, on their behalf. And still others will choose green disposition because they do not want their death to contribute to the warming of our planet, and related hardships for future generations. 

In addition, these alternative disposition methods are more affordable. While the national median cost of a funeral with viewing and burial is $8,300, the median cost of a funeral with cremation is $6,280, and experts suggest that green burial methods typically cost about the same or less than a fire cremation. This is in part because the equipment required to safely carry out alkaline hydrolysis or natural organic reduction is typically more affordable, and easier to maintain, than the equipment needed for flame cremation. 

So, as New Mexicans deal with the rising rate of deaths between now and 2045 (rates are expected to rise by 26%), funeral homes, individuals, and families must have the freedom to access and offer all possible options for dignified disposition. 

We know that there’s a growing interest in green burial. According to a recent survey, 17-19% of respondents, from young adults to elders, are interested in either green burial, human composting, or alkaline hydrolysis today. At the same time embalming and casket burial are becoming less popular, especially among more senior groups. 

Beyond the desires to avoid causing harm through one’s death and to receive a dignified farewell without bankrupting the family one leaves behind, there are other New Mexicans who simply want to make their death an act of giving. Whether it’s giving nutrients to plants and microbes, to ecosystems, and to the soil itself that sustains us, or passing on something to future generations:

By some estimates, when a composted body is returned to the earth, the process becomes carbon negative, sequestering as much as a half ton of carbon in the soil, offering a small gift of climate change mitigation to those who will persist even after we’re gone. 

For all these good reasons, New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group is part of a grassroots coalition of stakeholders in the environmental and deathcare sectors advocating for these eco-friendly disposition options currently unavailable in our state. 

With our legislative champions Senator Liz Stefanics and Representative Meredith Dixon, our goal for the 2027 legislative session is to pass Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) and Alkaline Hydrolysis (AH) legislation in New Mexico.

We want to see a future for ourselves and our loved ones where we can legally choose a green final act, and where funeral homes and other licensed, regulated, and professional after-death care providers can offer and carry out these meaningful services. Join us!

Learn more on the NM Healthy Soil Blog:

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  A Growing Movement Looks to Decarbonize Death

  Water cremation and human composting produce fewer emissions and return nutrients to the Earth.