Last year, lifestyle icon Martha Stewart created an internet sensation when she told a podcast host that she would pick composting over burial or cremation after she dies. She has Seattle entrepreneur Katrina Spade to thank for making that option an available, legal choice.

While a graduate student studying architecture, Spade set out to create an alternative for putting people to rest — one that offered a climate-friendly, sustainable solution while remaining practical in urban settings and palatable to loved ones.

“Cremation and burial, both are polluting in their own way,” Spade said. “And I don’t want my last gesture to pollute the earth.”

So in 2020, Spade launched her company, Recompose, becoming the first in the U.S. to develop the technology needed for the commercial composting of human bodies. Now 14 states have legalized the practice and more than a dozen others are considering it. Additional companies have joined Recompose in providing the alternative “death care” service and all are looking to scale. One, Earth Funeral, earlier this year opened the first human composting facility on the East Coast.

In comparing funeral options, a cremation produces about 530 pounds of carbon dioxide, roughly equivalent to driving a fuel-efficient car from Seattle to San Diego. Burials consume land and can rely on toxic embalming chemicals, chemically treated caskets, and concrete vaults. Composting requires almost no energy input and produces clean soil.

The process is relatively simple: A deceased person is put in a vessel with natural materials that create the conditions needed for composting. But Spade had to navigate technical and legal hurdles to turn the concept into a business, sparking a new sector within the funeral field.

The science and the law

Stewart and Spade both came to champion human composting by way of horses. When Stewart’s equine pets die, she wraps them in linen and buries them on her land to naturally decay into soil in a process akin to composting.

During her research, Spade discovered a video on horse composting from Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, chair of Washington State University’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. Carpenter-Boggs is an expert in the practice, which is routinely applied to livestock like cows and horses. Spade wanted to refine the approach for humans, and the two began collaborating.

They developed a strategy using stainless steel vessels and a blend of straw, alfalfa and wood chips.

“We determined… the best kind of recipe of plant materials that would have the right ratios of carbon and nitrogen, and also the right structural properties to allow air to permeate, because oxygen is critical to this process,” Spade said.

The vessels include thermometers to ensure the body reaches and holds a temperature of 131 degrees Fahrenheit for three consecutive days to destroy pathogens. The heat is generated entirely by naturally occurring microbes.

Before Spade could deploy the technology, she had another problem to solve. She was contacted by Tanya Marsh, a professor and expert in human remains law, who informed Spade that her plan was “completely illegal” in all 50 states, but offered to help her change that.

Spade then turned to her Seattle neighbor, state Sen. Jamie Pedersen, who was coincidentally pursuing another climate-friendly end-of-life alternative called alkaline hydrolysis or water cremation. Pedersen sponsored legislation to legalize composting, and it passed in 2019 with bipartisan support, paving the way for Recompose.

An unexpected appeal

Recompose has created an environment that Spade hopes is comforting for grieving friends and families. The facility features a room for sitting with the deceased, who is wrapped in a natural linen shroud, and a memorial space with vaulted ceilings and green and golden stained-glass windows.

Beyond that is the “greenhouse,” a soil- and straw-scented space containing 33 vessels for composting. Active composting takes about one month; the resulting soil is then removed to “cure” for an additional month to cool and dry out. Bones are broken down mechanically and added back to the soil, while non-organic materials like artificial joints are recycled.

The process creates 20 to 30 bags of a mulch-like material. Friends and families take as much as they like, and Recompose can donate a portion to its partners in land restoration and conservation.

Other companies offering human composting include Return Home and Earth Funeral, which are both based in the Seattle area.

Interest in the death-care alternative has been surprisingly broad.

“I really thought that this was going to be for the Subaru-driving urban Seattle dwellers, and they certainly exist,” said Micah Truman, founder and CEO of Return Home. “But we get as many people from ruby-red Eastern Washington as we do from Seattle or Bellevue.”

While liberals are drawn to the climate benefits, conservative farmers and hunters often feel deeply connected to returning to the land, Truman said. A third segment of customers simply finds traditional burial and cremation unnerving.

Younger generations opt in

In an unexpected turn, younger adults are opting in, too. Elyssa Tappero, a 30-something tsunami program manager for Washington state, is pre-funding her $7,000 Recompose service via $100 monthly installments.

“When I learned how much of an environmental impact there is from cremation, and how expensive some of those things are — and just the entire approach by the funeral industry — I knew that wasn’t something I wanted,” Tappero said.

Spade recognizes that addressing climate change requires much bigger actions than human composting, but is eager to do her part.

“If we can truly and meaningfully change the funeral industry, the way we care for our bodies, and … connect humans even more to the fact that we’re part of that ecosystem, we’re part of the natural world, that would be hugely satisfying,” she said.

Sources and references

Interviews:

• Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose
• Micah Truman, founder and CEO of Return Home
• Elyssa Tappero, customer of Recompose and tsunami program manager for the Washington Emergency Management Division

Additional sources:

• Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, chair of the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Washington State University
• Inside Recompose, where the human composting startup is ready to grow its formula beyond Seattle (GeekWire)
• 50+ & Unfiltered with Shawn Killinger, Episode 124 with Martha Stewart
• The environmental toll of cremating the dead (National Geographic)
• The Potential of Our Decay: Cemeteries That Save the American Landscape (Smithsonian)

With summer heat comes pool parties, beach days, backyard cookouts, and, of course, swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitoes.

But while insect bites have always been a side effect of time spent outdoors, the species doing the biting are changing in historically temperate regions like New England. As climate change makes these areas warmer and wetter, their ranges are expanding—and any diseases they carry come with them.

In Connecticut, for example, a statewide mosquito monitoring program has detected 54 different species, including invasives like the Asian tiger mosquito, which can transmit potentially serious diseases including dengue and Zika. The mosquito’s historical territory is in hot and humid climates farther south, but it has been moving north.

Read full article

Comments

As smoke from hundreds of burning wildfires spread across Canada and the United States, the first three operational satellites in the Google-backed FireSat program successfully launched into orbit. The satellites will begin providing wildfire detection capable of spotting even small fires in the United States, Australia, and Europe before the end of the year.

The launch of the microsatellites aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 7, 2026 marks a transition to “initial operational capability” for the FireSat constellation managed by the nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance. After a three-month testing period, the three satellites will begin actively providing data to fire agencies while covering every fire-prone region on Earth at least twice per day.

FireSat represents the first satellite constellation purpose-built for detecting wildfires, including spotting smaller fires that other satellites may miss. The satellites were designed by California-based satellite manufacturer Muon Space and have received over $15 million from Google to support initial deployment. Other notable financial supporters include the Bezos Earth Fund that committed $26 million.

Read full article

Comments

© Muon Space

Researchers say a common driving habit may be costing Americans far more than they realize.

Climate change is being driven largely by the greenhouse gases we've pumped into the atmosphere, which trap more of the Sun's energy there. That added energy increases the odds of extreme events: longer, more intense heat waves and droughts, interspersed with excessive precipitation. But these sorts of events have happened in the past—how can we tell if any given weather disaster has been made more likely by the climate?

It's a question with implications for everything from building codes to disaster preparedness. And there's some good news: According to a report released by the US National Academies of Science on Thursday, the field of climate attribution is growing increasingly mature and can answer some questions for us with far greater confidence than it could just a decade ago. The report also notes that there are still important limits and suggests steps to address them.

Overall, this makes it clear that climate attribution is normal, mainstream science. And the fossil fuel industry views that as a problem, as it could make it easier to hold companies liable for damages. This has triggered a backlash that has Republicans in Congress and state governments threatening the National Academies' funding.

Read full article

Comments

© Zhen Li

The weather conditions required for direct air free cooling are growing scarce, according to new research.

Amazon’s carbon footprint jumped 16% last year after several years of little or no increase. The company emitted nearly 80.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025. By comparison, that’s slightly higher than the nation of New Zealand’s emissions.

Amazon disclosed its climate-related data in its most comprehensive sustainability report to date, which includes a breakdown of its carbon sources, water use and other environmental impacts.

Not surprisingly, energy use showed the biggest rate of increase in the 2025 carbon tally as Amazon and other tech companies are working to rapidly expand their data center capacity to meet AI computing demand.

For the first time since 2019, the company also reported an uptick in its “carbon intensity” — a measure of how much carbon was emitted relative to each dollar of revenue. Amazon has promoted this metric as a sign that it can decouple its growth from its climate impacts.

Despite emissions moving in the wrong direction and ongoing data center-driven challenges, the Seattle-area company remains committed to its pledge of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

When it comes to that goal, “I remain confident and optimistic in the overarching vision and the long-term progress we continue to make toward it,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, in the foreword to the company’s annual report.

The report highlights areas of success that include:

• Data center efficiency: Amazon’s data centers are 9% more efficient than the public cloud average and 30% more efficient than on-premises data centers at directing energy toward computing rather than cooling, lighting or overhead.
• Data center water use: Amazon is seven times more efficient in its water use than the industry average thanks to its use of air cooling at most sites, most of the year.
• 100% clean energy overall: For the third year running, Amazon matched its company-wide electricity use with an equivalent volume of purchased clean energy, although it technically still draws on fossil fuels for some of its energy.
• Electric vehicle fleet: It has the largest corporate EV fleet in North America, with more than 52,700 delivery vans worldwide. It’s halfway to meeting its 2030 goal of 100,000 EVs.

The company also reported improvements in reducing packaging and plastic use in delivered items; increasing use of low-carbon building materials in data center construction; and progress toward becoming water positive at its data centers, meaning it aims to replenish more water to communities than it uses.

The Amazon-backed Climate Pledge — an effort to get other organizations to commit to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 — has grown to 656 signatories after adding 107 companies this year. It marks a notable increase at a time when companies are growing quieter about climate commitments, with some stepping back from earlier goals.

But the surge in data center investment shows little sign of slowing, which will keep complicating Amazon’s path to lower emissions. CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon expects to spend a record $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, including “AI, chips, robotics, and low-Earth orbit satellites.”

Not all reactions to that buildout have been positive — even within the company. Members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice this month testified before the Seattle City Council in favor of data center requirements for renewable energy and labor protections, though Amazon doesn’t operate any data centers within city limits.

In response to the sustainability report, the employee group was critical of the increased emissions and accused the company of pressuring carbon accounting standards bodies — including the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Science-Based Targets Initiative — to adopt weaker rules.

More than 1,000 employees have signed an open letter drafted last year criticizing Amazon’s “warp-speed approach” to its AI development, the group added.

In the report, Amazon CSO Hurst acknowledged that AI-fueled advances could catalyze sustainability solutions or slow progress toward climate goals.

“But what alternative do we have,” she said, “but to continue to invest, learn, and move forward to try to solve one of the world’s most challenging issues?”

Editor’s note: Story updated at 11:56 a.m. with comment from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

As AI and surging demand for power collide with a warming planet, most climate and environmental news can feel a little hopeless — and for good reason. But some scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs are quietly betting that technology can still tip the balance.

Those are the stories we’re telling on Positive Charge, a new podcast launching today, hosted by GeekWire reporter Lisa Stiffler and independent Seattle-based audio producer and journalist Laura Scott. The show goes inside the companies and labs working on environmental solutions, and connects with the people living with the problems they’re trying to solve.

Our thanks to Amazon Sustainability for sponsoring this independent editorial project.

Two episodes are already live: The first explores the “forever chemicals” contaminating water around the world, and the companies that have figured out how to destroy them. The second is about the global race to make fusion energy real, and the startups betting they can deliver nearly limitless clean power. 

Future installments will explore new climate and sustainability breakthroughs every few weeks.

Subscribe to Positive Charge on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, and find every episode at geekwire.com/positivecharge.