As Seen In Maryland Matters: Maryland's first 'human composting' facility is open for business

A new 37,000 square foot facility in Elkridge is now open, making human composting available to Maryland families for the first time.

Maryland Matters reporter Christine Condon toured Earth Funeral's newly opened Howard County facility, which offers natural organic reduction, transforming human remains into nutrient rich soil in over approximately 30-45 days. 

Earth Funeral CEO Tom Harries described the space simply: "The exterior belies what's going on inside." The company, which already operates facilities in Washington and Nevada, positions the process as a gentler, more environmentally conscious alternative to burial and cremation, one that skips the pollutants of cremation and the land and chemicals required for traditional burial.

To begin, bodies are placed in biodegradable shrouds inside a vessel that carefully manages temperature, moisture, and oxygen. Harries explained the science: "We are balancing carbon and nitrogen. The carbon comes from natural materials, like organic mulch, wood chip, wildflower, and the nitrogen comes from the body itself. You have to create a perfect ratio." He framed it within nature's own systems: "This is what would happen on a forest floor, but we are accelerating it through science and technology." 

Families may choose how much of their loved one's soil they'd like returned to them, with any remaining soil donated to conservation projects.

The article follows several Maryland and Virginia families who chose Earth Funeral, including Hal Perez and Tammi Stauffer of Baltimore, drawn to the process for its lighter environmental footprint, and Tom Racioppe, also of Baltimore, who wanted to spare his own family the difficult decisions he faced after his father's death. 

Dave Buermeyer of Reston, Virginia signed up alongside his wife after attending a company webinar, saying a nearby facility was a major factor: "That was huge, because I sensed that it was expanding, it was trending in the right direction."

The launch follows Maryland's 2024 law legalizing the process, part of a legal landscape that now spans more than a dozen states. Jack Mitchell, a former president of the National Funeral Directors Association, compared the moment to cremation's early rise, noting that funeral homes are increasingly building relationships with providers like Earth Funeral rather than offering the service themselves.