PROVIDENCE — A human composting bill died peacefully in Rhode Island’s General Assembly this week, held for further study, without a vote in committee.
Representative Michelle E. McGaw, a Portsmouth Democrat, had proposed legislation to allow the natural organic reduction of dead bodies — better known as human composting — as an alternative to cremation or burial.
But the bill never made it out of the House Corporations Committee, and the General Assembly concluded this year’s legislative session at 1:45 a.m. Friday.
“I introduced the bill to start the conversation about whether natural organic reduction was right for Rhode Island,” McGaw said Saturday. “The feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive and will be helpful as I work in the upcoming months to update the bill language to appropriately addresses this topic for the 2024 session.”
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Human composting aims to reduce the impact on the earth, McGaw said, noting that burial involves occupying land and paying for things such as caskets, grave liners, and gravestones. And she said cremation requires the burning of fossil fuel, pouring an average of 534 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere for each cremation — the equivalent of driving a car 500 miles.
McGaw explained that dead bodies are placed inside vessels, which are kept inside, along with organic matter that helps speed the natural decomposition process. A chamber keeps the vessels between 130 to 160 degrees, and the contents are blended regularly over the course of four to seven weeks. The result is about a cubic yard of nutrient-dense soil.
McGaw said she has constituents who want to have this option, so she introduced the bill to spur discussion at the State House. No companion bill was introduced in the Senate. “But look for one next year,” she said.
Washington became the first state to legalize the practice in 2019. And in December, New York became the sixth state to legalize natural organic reduction, joining Colorado, Oregon, California, and Vermont. Massachusetts legislators introduced a 2021 bill aiming to amend the definition of cremation to include human composting, as well as alkaline hydrolysis: the process of dissolving bodies in water. The Legislature did not pass the proposal, but lawmakers planned to reintroduce the bill again.
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The House Corporations Committee did not receive any sharp criticism of the proposal.
Dr. Utpala Bandy, the interim director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, told legislators the department “is in conceptual support of natural organic reduction, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of burial.” But, in a letter to the committee, she said the bill would need to be changed to “to ensure an adequate regulatory structure” and to include oversight by the Office of State Medical Examiners.
“For these reasons that RIDOH is not able to support these bills in their current form,” Bandy wrote. “However, RIDOH is both willing and interested in working with the sponsors to amend the proposed legislation.”
Robert Peter Mogielnicki, who lives part of the year in Charlestown, R.I., backed the bill, writing, “It would be so much easier for me and my family to know we could return to the earth by way of this peaceful and carbon-sparing method rather than having to have our bodies shipped out of state to get this done.”
And Timothy Riker, of Pawtucket, wrote in support, saying the bill would allow him to “someday have a spiritual ascension ceremony that is aligned with my beliefs and a funeral that is consistent with the way humans have been buried over thousands of years.” He said, “Embalming and cremation are not natural processes related to death, but rituals that have been developed through various ancient civilizations.”
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Riker began his message by quoting from the Book of Genesis: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, til thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @FitzProv.