Home / The LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast / Make Your Death as Meaningful as Your Life (The Complete Conversation with Seth Viddal)

Make Your Death as Meaningful as Your Life (The Complete Conversation with Seth Viddal)

Watch this LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast episode and subscribe to the LightAtTheEnd.com channel on YouTube:

This podcast can also be watched in two shorter halves, if you prefer:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/ACkPVmockOM
Part 2: https://youtu.be/iYx8BIzu3NI

Listen to this LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast episode by clicking the Play button below, or find us on your favorite Podcast platform, including Apple, Amazon, and Spotify (some are still being added!)

Summary

In the ever-evolving landscape of modern society, even the most sacred and traditional aspects of life, such as funerary practices, are subject to change. In a thought-provoking conversation from the LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast, host Kevin Berk and guest Seth Viddal, COO of The Natural Funeral, explore a variety of alternative end-of-life options that transcend conventional burial and cremation methods.

Introduction to Alternative Funeral Practices

The podcast opens with Kevin Berk welcoming listeners back to the LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast, a resource dedicated to exploring end-of-life topics. Joined by Seth Viddal, co-owner and COO of The Natural Funeral, the conversation delves into how funerary practices can be aligned with personal values, particularly those concerned with environmental consciousness.

Seth Viddal’s Journey from Personal Loss to Innovation

Seth Viddal shares his deeply personal journey, marked by the loss of his parents and sibling within a short time frame. These experiences propelled him towards seeking alternative ways of honoring lives lost. Seth recounts the influence of his stepfather, Ramon Olachia, whose profound connection to nature and cultural heritage led to Viddal’s awakening to the limitations of traditional funerals. After enduring repeated losses and a personal health scare, Viddal redirected his career path towards establishing The Natural Funeral.

The Birth of The Natural Funeral

In collaboration with entrepreneurs Dan Ziskin and Karen van Vuuren, Viddal helped establish The Natural Funeral in 2019. The organization is committed to offering eco-friendly and personalized funerary services that reflect the unique lives of the deceased. Here, families are encouraged to participate in the care of their loved ones, fostering a more meaningful and intimate farewell.

Innovative Alternatives: Water Cremation and Terramation

Seth introduces innovative alternatives such as water cremation (alkaline hydrolysis) and terramation (natural organic reduction or body composting). Each offers distinct benefits for those seeking environmentally conscious disposition methods. Water cremation, a process involving the hydrolyzation of the body, produces a nutrient-rich liquid that can nourish the earth. Though previously obscure, alkaline hydrolysis has gained momentum as a more sustainable option compared to flame cremation.

Terramation, or body composting, is highlighted as a transformative approach poised to revolutionize the funeral industry. Viewing death as a reintegration into the natural cycle, terramation allows for the complete return of a loved one to the earth. Viddal shares its growing popularity and potential to become a predominant funerary choice in the near future.

Enhancing Visibility and Accessibility of Alternative Practices

Despite the growing interest in these practices, Viddal emphasizes the current limitations in accessibility due to state regulations. While terramation is legal in 12 states and water cremation in 28, availability remains scarce. However, future expansions are underway as legislation continues to evolve, potentially broadening these options nationwide.

Reflecting on the Impact and Future of Funerary Practices

Kevin Berk and Seth Viddal conclude with reflections on the deeply personal and progressive nature of funerary choices. The exploration of these alternative practices has turned conversations about death from fear-laden to potentially empowering, allowing individuals to creatively express their final wishes.

The dialogue highlights the importance of continued advocacy and education to expand access to these sustainable methods, ultimately enabling more people to convey their life’s values through their chosen method of disposition.

Final thoughts inspire listeners to consider their end-of-life plans and communicate their wishes with loved ones, fostering a more compassionate and environmentally conscious perspective toward death. As societal attitudes shift, individuals have unprecedented opportunities to align their final journey with their lived principles, marking a significant evolution in how we honor the lives of those who have departed.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Ep. 6 (complete): “Honoring Life Naturally: Beyond Conventional Funeral Practices” (Feb 12, 2025)

Introduction to the Podcast and Guest

Welcome back to the LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast. LightAtTheEnd.com is a resource for those who want to learn more about end of life topics, but don’t know where to start. I’m Kevin Berk, and I’m joined today by Seth Viddal, co-owner and COO of The Natural Funeral (thenaturalfuneral.com).

Kevin Berk: Seth, thank you so, so much for joining me today. I’m thrilled that we got introduced by our mutual colleague, Alexis Rebane of Guardian Fox Arts (guardianfoxarts.com), and it’s wonderful to be finally meeting you.

Seth: Thanks, Kevin. I’m really glad to be here and I’m grateful for the work that you’re doing at LightAtTheEnd.com.

Kevin Berk: Nice. Thank you.

So, I’ve had a couple of conversations with people, including Alexis and Emily Miller, talking about green burial and eco friendly alternatives, and because I don’t want this discussion to be totally duplicative of those, I’ll probably dig deeper on some of the topics that we previously discovered. But that said, I know that you will have a different perspective and I would love to hear it. So if there’s anything that I ask where you feel like backing up the bus and starting a little bit earlier [is in order], I welcome you to do it.

Seth: Sounds great, Kevin.

Kevin Berk: Okay, good.

Personal Journey and Family Losses

Kevin Berk: How did thenaturalfuneral.com come to be and how did you become involved in it?

Seth: Yeah, well, that’s a kind of a long story that, that really led up to how I got curious about working with folks around the end of life transition. And, Kevin, that, story really began with the passing of my parents. But maybe even before that, when I was 10 years old, I found myself being, raised – myself and a younger brother – by our single mother.

And, at 10 years old, my mom fell in love with a new man and he eventually became my stepfather. And, his name is Ramon Olachia and he was Mescalero Apache and was very connected with his cultural roots and his identity and practiced the crafts and the lore and kept alive really the spirit of his lineage.

And he taught that to his kids. And I was fortunate at 10 years old. I felt really like I’d won the lottery, from this mentality of, sort of, scarcity and lacking a father figure to having someone that I really Looked up to in the way that he related to nature and to other human beings.

And he really set me off on a path of scouting and camping and being outdoors and appreciating. our connectedness with other living beings, and, that was at 10 years old. And so I got to grow up in his care and our family got bigger and my parents had a child together and they adopted several children and they fostered several children.

And we had a great, big, beautiful family. And,I would eventually grow up and, move away. And, there was a point where my, my father was growing older. And, I got a call one day from my mother that my dad just hadn’t woken up that day. And we were sad, but he’d had a decline over several years, physically, and…maybe another story for another time, two weeks prior to his passing, he and I got to take a big road trip and we went to some sacred spiritual places around the country. We found ourselves at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and we found ourselves at the Custer monument in the black Hills of South Dakota, and we had this really blessed time together, not knowing that it would be our last time spent together, and that preceded my mom’s phone call saying dad had died by about two weeks. And so, two and a half weeks, then, after this trip with my dad, I found myself with my mom at a funeral home in Texas, in the little Gulf coast town where I grew up with my stepdad and mom and big family, and we were making funeral arrangements and the arranger, I remember him reaching back in a file cabinet over his shoulder and pulling out the file folder that we had most recently used in my family, which was the death of my grandfather. And so what we basically did was we approved this cookie cutter funeral, the same casket and the same two hour visitation and the same tea and crumpets,that we had purchased several years earlier when my grandfather had died.

And at the moment, I. I didn’t really connect that this action we had just taken for my father really didn’t match who he was, but as you do, when you’re getting through life, we tend to just tap the brakes for just long enough to get through a funeral event, at least that’s how we had historically in my family and everybody does the best they can.

And you come together and you console and you share memories and you eat some casserole and we tell some stories and then everybody is back to back to the business of living.

The Impact of Repeated Losses

Seth: And Kevin, it was about one year later that my mom called me again, and this time with much more sadness than her voice. She was calling to let me know that my little brother, Sam, had died by suicide. And so, Mom and I found ourselves, about a year later, back in the same funeral home, and I remember reaching over the shoulder and pulling out the file cabinet and saying, well, this is the last funeral that we had for your family.

And we basically repeated the same funeral, but this time it was for my little brother and Sam had, been adopted by my parents and was a gay man in coastal Texas that grew up in a struggle around his own identity and self worth and a joy that he found in the world.

And in, in that moment of sadness, my mom and I made the decision to replicate the same funeral that we had before, I mean, same casket, same kind of visitation and all.

Kevin Berk: Did that just make it easier to get past it? Was that kind of the thought process at that point?

Seth: It was taking the option that we knew worked last time. it really wasn’t a part of the conversation, what might we do differently? Who was Sam and how was his life different than Ramon’s, and how would we come together as a family differently in this moment?

It really, Kevin was about, this is a simple option. It’s the low hanging fruit. We already know this works. Let’s get the same model of casket, do the same routine and same tea and crumpets, same ceremony, we just sort of got through it. That was in March of 2015, that Sam died and in March of 2016, my brother called me because my mother had died while she was packing her bag to come to Colorado and visit me and my family the following day. And so, that was another unexpected loss. And my family found ourselves back, y’know, there’s some coffee stores where they’ll give you a punch card after you have so many lattes, you get, you know, your eighth one free… and that’s what it felt like. We felt like we were on a conveyor belt, through this funeral home and we bought the same funeral for mom. And then after we got through mom’s funeral, something gave in me and in my family.

Around that same time period, Kevin, in March of 2016, I experienced a ruptured intestine and I found myself hospitalized, for, about a 10 day period where I underwent a life threatening experience where, I’d gone into a toxic sort of septic shock from this intestinal rupture. And then after I left the hospital, severely compromised, and attended my mother’s funeral that way and made the plans for her funeral that way. So even again, in that moment, it was about taking the easy option and following the path that we had done before, sort of without the thought of what we might bring new in that moment.

Reflecting on Mortality and Career Shift

Seth: And so Kevin, that was a long, story personally, after death became an uninvited guest, those three times with my mother, brother, and father, and then nearly with myself having experienced a life threatening event, I stopped and, or I shouldn’t say I stopped… the universe stopped me and forced me to examine the question, what is mortality trying to teach me right now? And what is my place in the world?

The Birth of The Natural Funeral

Seth: At the time, I owned and operated a business that my wife and I decided to sell and I went back to school in my forties,to explore how I was going to servein end of life care and in recognizing these transitions that are available to us when one of us dies.

Kevin Berk: Seth, that’s such a rich story. Thank you so much for sharing it with me. It seems to give some great context for what you do in the rest of the conversation we’re going to be having. I have to ask: was there never a point with your father where he had discussed what he wanted after he passed or, after he did, with your mom about what she wanted after she passed?

Was that conversation never had? It’s interesting that you ended up with your, your brother, your father, your mother all having the exact same burial experience, and it didn’t sound like that had ever been talked about.

Seth: No, Kevin, it wasn’t. Our family was very similar to most sort of American, cultural households where, death is not talked about very frequently. In fact, I remember when my grandparents died, based on the ages of the children was who got invited to the funeral.

And it was,like with a lot of families, how can the children process this? How much do we describe to them clearly? How much do we separate them from what we perceive will be a tragedy or a sorrow that they won’t know how to process, or that’ll be difficult for us to process if we bring it up together? We were just as bad at having that conversation in my family as, I think most households, or many households.

Maybe it took me seeing it in threes for me to wake up to the possibility that I’d like to really peel back what’s possible at that moment, because it was through those funeral experiences that I realized we’re leaving a lot on the table about what’s possible.

Kevin Berk: And I imagine having that, extreme health scare of your own had you really thinking about it as well.

Seth: It did. It did. Not so much my own funeral, but, it really got me to, to thinking about what do I want to do with the rest of my life. I sort of had been a a serial entrepreneur for years and had started multiple companies from real estate development And finally, a general contracting firm that was doing a lot of commercial and industrial work so I’d build or rehabilitate strip malls or churches or schools or restaurants. And it really took, the sobering impact of those losses to make me wake up to the possibility that I have something to give in this space and it maybe it’s through the acute awareness that the universe provided to me in a short period of time that I’d like to focus on this, that I realized that’s how I want to spend the rest of my life.

Exploring Conventional Burial and Cremation

Kevin Berk: Most of us westerners of our relative age grew up with two options, burial and cremation.

But can we talk about how those became the predominant methods of final disposition? I’d never really stopped to think about it until I heard you on the frankly-excellent Body of Wonder Podcast, talking a little bit about it. And I went, you know, I’d never thought about that, but it makes a lot of sense.

Seth: Yeah. Kevin,I’ll be a little bit crass here because you could boil those those options down to what, what they used to ask a long time ago when you’d,arrive at a restaurant or a social engagement, they’d ask, “would you like smoking or non smoking?” And many funeral homes ask which like cremation or burial and that’s the bottom line that we’re getting to.

And then around that, we’re going to package some other services or maybe,catering or, or,a fancy casket or a viewing or a dove release or music. But you’re right, those have been the, at the crux of the offering for many, many years. I could give you a history of burial and a history of embalming that dates back to the Civil War or the history of cremation in this country that dates back to Philadelphia in the 1880s, but those have been the main two options for a long, long time. And Kevin, I think it’s the way that like that funerals came into my consciousness and my needing to act on as an adult where I became a decision maker in the funeral process and I found myself ill-equipped to challenge the status quo or to really be creative or innovative and what might be a thoughtful funeral consideration for my folks that were experiencing those losses.

And I defaulted to what is the easiest path forward.

Innovative Alternatives: Water Cremation and Terramation

Seth: And some ideas, Kevin, that have come forth in the past several years in the mainstream funeral consciousness are concepts like water cremation, which is also called alkaline hydrolysis. There’s another process called terramation, which is scientifically referred to as natural organic reduction or body composting.

There are some otherreally radical concepts even that are being explored that aren’t at the proof phase that are being explored, internationally. that may be outside the scope of our conversation today, but to just bring into, maybe to broaden the lanes of what people are thinking about.

It’s not just, cremation or burial or smoking or non smoking. Now we have folks who’ve come to us who’ve said, I’d like to be cremated because I don’t believe in taking up ground forever. In fact, I don’t,I’m not going to die in the town I was born and my children don’t live in the town where I’m going to die and the idea of a permanent memorialization in a geography that doesn’t have a longgenerational lineage with my family doesn’t make any sense.

And furthermore, I composted my table scraps. I have solar panels on my house. I drive a hybrid car. I zeroscape my yard. I don’t want to be put in the ground and have the grass be watered and mowed for perpetuity, for nobody to come and visit.

And so I’d like a cremation, but I havea fear of fire, or I have a religious or cultural perspective that doesn’t agree with fire or cremation and my human body or my spiritual body. And so these other concepts are meeting the needs of people who have environmental or sacred or personal reasons that they’d like a different disposition method.

Kevin Berk: I’ll give a little historical perspective on these other two options that I’m going to share and what I’m, what I want to pause for just a second, Kevin, maybe it makes sense to offer your listeners this jump, because I said, I went back to school in the late 20-teens and As a part of that journey in searching for how I was going to manifest an offering in the second half of life, I was really blessed to meet a couple of entrepreneurs who were beginning, they had a fledgling concept for The Natural Funeral, but we didn’t yet have our doors open or have a brick and mortar facility. And In my sort of culminating capstone project, final semester, back at university in my adulthood, I met Dan Ziskin and Karen van Vuuren who had this idea for something called The Natural Funeral. And it was going to be in Boulder County, but again, we didn’t have the spot yet. And we opened in March of 2019 and I opened with them as an intern and we since developed our friendship into a business partnership, and now I get to operate The Natural Funeral every day. We began in Boulder County,and we’ve since opened an additional funeral home about 40 miles to the north in another county and a care center down in the Denver metro area.

Seth: But that all is important to know as we tie into water cremation and terramation, because it was sitting down with hundreds of families with radical curiosity, knowing that they had just had their moment like I had when my mom called and said dad had died, or when my mom called and said that Sam had died, or when my brother called and told me that mom had died.

 It wasn’t my time to think and be creative then. My time to be creative about what can happen in the funeralindustry and what shifts are available to us happened like… one cup of tea after the next, as I would sit down with families in our parlor at The Natural Funeral in Lafayette, Colorado. We pour tea here in the china that was my grandmother’s wedding set that when she died, became my mother’s that’s now become mine. and as I slide the cup of tea to this family and I ask them, “What would it mean for us to create something that really honored the values of your person, your husband, your child, your parent?”

I listened to that question with really a built in curiosity that wants to understand: how can I advocate for this family in a way they may not even know is possible? How can I listen between their descriptions of their person to offer them the simplest access to a funeral that will meet their needs? But maybe do that in a way that’s going to plant a seed of creativity in them to honor their person in a way they didn’t know possible.

So time after time, people would come and they would describe to me a life of environmental activism or they count their footprint with each step that they take in their impact to the planet. And then they’d say in light of that, I know I don’t want to take up ground forever, or I don’t want toxins pumped into my body that may affect a water supply. I don’t want fancy hardwood on my casket. I don’t want a marble headstone imported from somewhere. And in fact, when I think about being cremated, I don’t want to go out a smokestack and be pollution in the neighborhood, what else have you got for me? Have you got anything that matches who I am?

Introduction to Water Cremation

Seth: And so one day a person approached us and said, “have you guys heard of water cremation?” I hadn’t. And she said, I just moved from Florida a few months ago, and when my dog passed away, my veterinarian said, “do I want to have my pet cremated?” And of course I did because I love my pet. and so then the veterinarian said, “would you prefer flame cremation or a water cremation?” I’d never heard of that before. So after the vet told me about this, I said, “Oh, I want that. It sounds gentler and better for the earth. And I still get back my urn with some remains to scatter.” And so this person said it was so meaningful, why can’t we offer that to people? And so we got to doing some research, and this was back in 2019, and we found out that a method of disposition called alkaline hydrolysis had been legalized in certain states. And in fact, Colorado had passed a law allowing for alkaline hydrolysis or water cremation, and that law had passed back in 2011, but nobody was offering it. And so we got to work with a supplier of the technology, the instrument that performs alkaline hydrolysis.

And we began offering that to the consumer in response to a request that came over a cup of tea across a lit candle in a moment of a family’s curiosity about how we could match a funeral to their values. We couldn’t obviously perform the service immediately, but within, I would say it was, maybe three months, we had already made the investment to begin retrofitting our facility with this technology.

And Kevin, that was back in 2019. and now we have served hundreds of families from all over the United States, a few international families who have heard that we’re offering this thing and it resonates with them. And so they move heaven and earth to put arrangements in place so that’s what happens with their body when their time comes.

Personalized and Environmentally Friendly Funerals

Kevin Berk: The fact that it took someone else bringing that to you and, and you weren’t aware of it, even being in the industry It shows kind of a remarkable shift that occurred not only in you and, and your business, but just the, public consciousness, I suppose, around water cremation being a real, valuable, and available, and legal option.

Seth: Yeah. There there really has been an enormous shift in the consumer Kevin. I’m lucky because I got to funeral service wanting to put myself out there to advocate for the consumer’s needs, wants, shifts in an industry, but I had no idea what those needs and shifts would be. Andto some extent, it began with what can we do in the ritual space?

What can we do inside of a chapel? How can we allow a family to experience caring for their loved one alongside us? Rather than the outsourcing that occurs. a lot of times there’s a death call that comes to a funeral home. It might come from a nursing facility or from a hospital or a coroner’s office or a family’s home.

And often the question is, “how quick can you get here?” and we found that sometimes families don’t just want the body picked up and taken away, and then they don’t see it again until burial day or, they don’t see their loved one again until everybody else does, and there’s a visitation and there might be 300 other people. But the parent or the sibling didn’t get that intimate time alone with their person. So our early offerings were really how can we bring the family in to participate in the care of their person with us rather than us asking for a picture of mom, so we know what side to comb and part her hair on. What if we bring the family together and we say, Here’s warm water with essential oils in it and combs and brushes, let’s comb mom’s hair together. Should we put a braid in her hair a final time and we’ll have families telling stories about, Oh, mom loved it. I’d braid her hair and my sister would rub her shoulders at the same time. And we’d tell stories and we’re right back in that moment with a family inviting them into some style of participation in the death care that they didn’t know was possible.

So you’re right, Kevin, a lot of our early sort of creativity leaned toward how do we bring the family in, into this care participatory with us? And, and it took those candle side moments for a family to say, what else have you got?

And thank goodness! There’s a big quadrant in, in,of what I don’t know. I don’t know. And it, there’s a big section of my intelligence, right? The, I don’t know what I don’t know yet. And there’s so much that lives out in that realm that. People bring it to us as gifts and they bring it to us in their time of need and they say, what would really resonate with me right now is I don’t want to participate necessarily.

Maybe I’m too timid for that. Or I’m just not ready for that. But what I do want is my wife was a rose gardener and what I really want is a way to respect the earth and to have her body rejoin the cycle of life. Can you do that? And the person may not know that what they’re asking for is actually a technology where.

Yeah,

 if her,specialty and passion was investing her time and nutrients and care into a rose garden. The truth is her whole body can become that gesture of love. And a family doesn’t know necessarily how to ask for that.They might come in and they might say, “how can I come back as a tree? How could I come back as a flower?” Or,just “How can I do good?” And we connect those dots.

Kevin Berk: You were approaching it from a place of hands on customization and it was the desires of the people who you were engaging in these conversations with that then sort of exposed, well, how can we give you what you’re looking for?

Seth: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It’s a lot of, it’s a lot of curiosity. It’s a lot of active listening and it’s really,As our team comes together and we talk about our commitments toward the family with no attachment to what it is that they’re going to ask for, because they’re not necessarily the same religion or cultural background or age orthey may have radically different perspectives and views and we appreciate and celebrate that. And so our team tries to advocate from a perspective of we want what you’re about to ask us for. We want to empower you to receive what you’re about to ask us for. How do we lay groundwork for you to feel safe and comfortable asking us for what you need?

The Importance of Family Involvement

Seth: So we’ve tried to create some lanes for that and tried to create some space for that. And it starts with the way we welcome people over tea and we light a candle with a match. We ask them if we can bring the warmth and the closeness of their loved one into this conversation with us and then we allow their presence of their loved one and their values to inspire the funeral service that we’re getting ready to co-create with this family.

Inclusion of Children in Funeral Processes

Kevin Berk: From all that I’ve been reading recently, it sounds like that process of being more involved and engaged with the person after they’ve passed it’s actually much healthier for the family members, the loved ones to be involved at that level and to often introduce children at a younger age to that. It has less of a spectre of of being ominous and scary if they’re kind of there for the whole thing. that your understanding as well, or your experience?

Seth: Yeah, Kevin, that definitely matches with my experience and when people call and they’ll often ask, you know, “there’s a, a 12 year old grandson, can we bring him” or maybe the death occurred, to a person in their, young twenties or late teens, and the family wants to ask about bringing younger siblings, you know, “we’ve got a seven year old little brother, would it be okay for him to come?”

And it’s deeply personal to each family and we respect each family’s opinion. And we always encourage the full inclusion of the whole family body because the whole family is going to process this loss together. And the family is a unit that’s forever changed by the transformation of this one person going from being an active, living participant in the family body to now a living memory in the family body.

And so we encourage that engagement and participation.

 I’ll share with you a really sweet story that’s always stuck with me and it was early on, it was actually back in 2019 when I was Very new with The Natural Funeral. We didn’t yet offer water cremation or terramation. It was the very early days in 2019. We’d just opened our facility when a young woman died and that young woman was in her early twenties and had a younger sibling who was in his teens. And I’ll remember the mother asking, would it be okay if he came to see his sister this final time, and I remember Him touching his sister and recoiling at the temperature that he felt when his warm hand came in contact with her cool skin. And I remember him saying, Recoiling and saying, “that’s not my sister. That’s her body. My sister’s not here anymore.” And it was the temperature. It was touching her skin and feeling the difference in his warm skin and her cool skin that like a lightning bolt put that recognition into this young person, and into me too, and I backed away and I had a private emotional experience realizing this young person had just taught me a, an enormous lesson in reality And in processing the life of his loved one.

So it’s, it’s beautiful. And it happens a lot of different ways, Kevin.

Kevin Berk: this is just the shell, their spirits someplace else… [That’s] probably a whole other discussion, but for now, let’s get back to where we left off talking about water cremation or alkaline hydrolysis. Now, that has also been available for about 100 years.

 If that’s accurate, that it’s been around for so long, how has it been ignored for so long?

History and Technology of Alkaline Hydrolysis

Seth: Alkaline hydrolysis was patented by process on December 25th of 1888 by a man named Amos Herbert Hobson. And so alkaline hydrolysis, the technology has existed since the late 1880s. It was patented around the the hydrolyzation of livestock carcasses. Amos Hobson patented it as a disposition technique for cattle.

 It really remained relatively obscure and certainly not commercialized in any way for a long, long time. It wasn’t patented in terms of a human funerary application. It wasn’t until the, I believe 1990s, maybe 1980s-1990s, that research universities begin using alkaline hydrolysis for disposition of body donors for the donor programs and the first, academic implementation that I’m aware of – and I don’t consider myself a subject matter expert on alkaline hydrolysis, but I’m doing the best I can to relate to you the historical timeline as I, as I know it – in the 1980s or 90s, the Mayo Clinic began using alkaline hydrolysis systems for disposition of cadavers through their body donation program.

And, there, there was implementation around that before several companies patented products for use in commercial human funerary applications.

And there today exist only a handful of companies who make, instruments for alkaline hydrolysis. There are 28 states that have passed legislation allowing for alkaline hydrolysis, but I would share that just like in Colorado, where it was legalized in 2011, and in 2019 we began as the first operator in Colorado, there are lots of states where alkaline hydrolysis is legal, yet not offered.

Can I tell you a little bit about the technology or do you feel pretty…

Kevin Berk: Oh, of course!

Seth: …do you think your listeners are pretty tuned into that?

Kevin Berk: No, no, no, I would love to hear it. And, and I suspect they would too.

The Process of Water Cremation

Kevin Berk: OK, so let me give you a description of alkaline hydrolysis which is by definition a process of chemistry. It is where the body is placed in an instrument and surrounded by water and alkaline compounds in order that the soft tissue of the body is removed and converted into liquid form or hydrolyzed.

Seth: The process in our system takes about three and a half hours for each decedent. The decedent is placed into a stainless steel vessel that’s about the dimensions and shape of a bathtub. It’s about 2 feet wide by about 2 feet deep by about 7 feet long. And with the loved one, we place 12 gallons of warm water.

And then alkaline compounds are metered into the water, producing a base or high pH alkaline compound that surrounds the body. Our vessel then gently rocks, and then once the chemicals in the water are placed into the vessel with the body, on about a 15 second timer, we rock three degrees down one way, and then about 15 seconds later, we rock three degrees down the other way.

And this process of creating a wave across the body takes place on about a 15 second timer for about the next three and a half hours. This is a closed system, so there’s no emission, there’s no smoke or pollutant going out a chimney, all of the essence of the body is captured and maintained in this vessel – and what we’re left with at the end of the process, three and a half hours in, are three distinct things inside the alkaline hydrolysis vessel.

One of those things is anything inorganic from the body, a pacemaker, or a joint, or a hip, or a knee, anything that was implanted surgically in the body would survive this process and we would send that for medical recycling. Titanium, silicone, precious metals from teeth, amalgams from cavity repairs, anything that can be medically extracted and recycled is, Sent back into,a circular, recycling system.

And the other two things are the bone, the skeletal remain of the body, which is the same thing that’s in a cremation chamber following a flame cremation. People often think that they receive back the ashes following a flame cremation, when in fact, they’re receiving back skeletal remains, there aren’t really ashes following a flame cremation. It takes place at such a high temperature that the ash is actually re-incinerated until it’s just smoke. And so the cremated remains or what we’re familiar with receiving in an urn are skeletal remains. And so too, in a water cremation, we take these skeletal remains and we reduce them to a powder form in order to put them in an urn and we give them back to the family.

slide. And the third and final thing in the chamber there is the essence of the body itself,the water, the liquid remains from the process. So rather than converting, like I said, to a smoke, our body which began as 68 percent water or liquid in our body, is now, that elementally in the chamber.

And what I mean by elementally is there’s nothing scientifically measurable, which could be a pathogen or DNA or a pharmaceutical or anything that is not an element. What’s able to be scientifically measured are things like nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium and calcium and magnesium.

What cannot be found are things likeacetaminophen, or Seth, or a pathogen of any kind, right? So we’re elementally returnedto nature in that way. So the medical equipment is recycled. The skeletal remains are returned to the family in an urn for scattering or burial or memorialization. And the essence of the body is returned to the cycle of life as a nutrient rich bio stimulant.

Kevin Berk: Seth, I’m so glad you explained that to me. I was a little unsure about the separation between the skeletal remains and the liquid essentially that was, that was created, the bio stimulant, as you say.

Introduction to Terramation

Kevin Berk: Can we talk now about the terramation, or the body composting alternative?

Seth: We can. In fact, Kevin, in this modern moment of,early 2025, that is in fact, my favorite and most passionate topic, because I see the needle moving in a big, big way in the funeral industry around terramation, and there’s something about the way people connect with this process, that water cremation hasn’t quite found. I would say even flame cremation hasn’t quite found, terramation has come to the funeral consumer in such a radically well received way that I have great cause for enthusiasm that it actually is going to be the catalyst that affects the biggest change the funeral industry’s seen in the last hundred years.

So I’m ecstatic to talk about it.

Kevin Berk: So you think that, I don’t know how, how many decades from now, that’ll be the 70%?

Seth: I think it could be as soon as 30 years from now. And again, Kevin, we’re talking about the shift of a 25 billion dollar a year industry that affects 22,000 funeral homes across the country, serving 3.3 million deaths a year in the United States. And yeah, I’m calling our mark that 30 years from now, terramation can be the largest market segment in the funeral industry, because the consumers that we have walk through the door, whether they are planning ahead for something that is going to occur, hopefully a long time in the future, and they’re healthy today, they walk through the door skipping about their enthusiasm for having found this thing that they finally relate to.

We’ve had people, I’ll tell you stories of people in their thirties who’ve come in healthy as can be, no prognosis, no reason to be at a funeral home other than, “I heard about this thing in the news, and if y’all offer this, I want to sign up today so that in the unlikely event, I’m, in some accident and I need funeral services soon, make no mistake about it, this is exactly what I want for my body.” And I’ve had people in their thirties come and, stop what they’re doing, take a day off work, come tour the terramation facility, write a check. to prepay for their you know, eventual service, and skip out and go tell their friends about this happy thing they’ve just done. It is allowing people to connect with the reality that we are mortals and we are finite and that the cycle of life that existed before we who have this name got here will exist after we are, gone, at least in this iteration.

And there’s a useful thing that we can do with our remains when we don’t need them anymore. and that’s what the process of terramation symbolizes to so many people. Terramation is both much, much older than water cremation and much, much newer than water cremation.

The Future of Terramation

Seth: And I’ll explain what I mean by both of those things. Terramation is the act of composting. It is the act of returning a living, being plant, vegetable, animal that has lived, grown a body and died and in so coming back into contact with the biome that represents earth’s skin or earth’s soil layer, that body becomes digested back into the top soil of earth in a nutshell, that’s been happening here forif the planet’s 4.6 billion years, then, 800 million years later, when single cell organisms and plants,began to live and die. They began to compost. Terramation is the idea of an architecture grad student from about 10 or 12 years ago, who is named Katrina Spade. And she started in the Washington area with something called the Urban Death Project. And it was a concept for composting human remains in an urban center where we might be land constrained for cemeteries, or we might somehow in a concrete jungle, in an urban empire, recognize that we didn’t come from this concrete and that our body can become earth again or become living again when we’re done with it. this concept of research began 10 or 12 years ago about how do we take this most natural thing that occurs for all living things in the world and make it reverent and sacred and contained and dignified in a way that we can bring that… call it “biotechnology” into the funeral consumer experience and relationship with death.

Natural Organic Reduction and Its Impact

Seth: And so the Urban Death Project evolved into Katrina’s company called Recompose (recompose.life), which is now one of four operators in the United States who offer a service called natural organic reduction. And natural organic reduction was first legalized so that composting, the science of composting, could legally intersect with the industry of human being dispositions.

So that began in Washington State about 2019, and now 12 states have laws that allow for natural organic reduction. Three of the operators that exist today began in Washington State and still operate there. And the other U. S. operator is us, The Natural Funeral that, that operates out of Colorado.

The Process of Terramation

Seth: We began terramation in our purpose-built Chrysalis vessels back in September of 2021 and natural organic reduction, whether we’re doing it or another operator is doing it is basically the placement of one human body in a sealed and controlled vessel where the body is surrounded with organic materials. Some people use sawdust, some people use, wood chips, some people use different things. We use mainly wood chips, straw, alfalfa, and we use a biodynamic tea that has blends of certain bacteria and fungi that are accelerants in the safe, effective, and rapid decomposition of, of a human body.

And so the wood chip, straw, alfalfa, the tea and the bodyin our vessels, our chrysalis vessels are oxygenated. So that we promote the aerobic living, breathing bacteria, we control the temperature of the vessel because there are certain ranges where we need to heat the vessel enough that it destroys pathogens that could be with the body to make this process safe and hygienic, and we control that temperature range because different bacteria thrive and decompose at their best rates in certain temperature windows.

And we inoculate this with this proprietary tea along the way, so that we keep our biologic counts exactly where we want them to be at different points in the process. And we rotate the vessel periodically. And that rotation allows the bacteria and fungi that don’t otherwise have mobility, we aid them in their mobility.

And we also oxygenate and control temperature through rotation. It’s a very precise instrument for performing nature’s very oldest task of reuniting living beings with her body. At the end of our process, we create around 400 pounds Of what we call regenerative living soil, which is to say the organic return of your stardust to the cycle of life.

We give it to families in containers that they can carry, or we make donations to land stewards on behalf of families who wish for us to donate it.

Kevin Berk: Now is that the same, whether you’re talking about the nutrient-rich liquid from, alkaline hydrolysis and the, organic material that comes from body composting, Are both of those able to be

 used to then enrich soil?

Seth: Yes, to answer your question, Kevin, both the end product from terramation and the end result from water cremation are sterile, nutrient rich outputs that we can return to the cycle of life.

At water cremation, at the conclusion of that, the output is a sterile nutrient rich liquid. Which if you’ve got any gardeners in your listening audience, they would know that the macro nutrients are what we typically would advertise when we’re talking about fertilization, and the output from a water cremation is typically a 1-3-9 NPK, and there are other trace elements that are micronutrients that are very valuable.

But,we contribute to the growth of things with the nutrients that we built our bodies out of, and the output from terramation looks like soil. And I will happily share some photos, Kevin, for you to be able to demonstrate this and share with your audience.

Kevin Berk: Excellent, thank you.

Parting Stones and Memorial Alternatives

Kevin Berk: One of the things that I noticed on your website and I’ve seen it on, on other sites, and this I think goes back more to flame cremation as an alternative, is memorial stones or parting stones, and I’d like to understand that more, cause I don’t completely, it, it seems to me to be a very attractive alternative, but I just don’t know. So maybe you can inform me.

Seth: Yeah, oh yeah, Kevin. People have really connected well with solidified remains and there’s a company that we work closely with called Parting Stone, which is expert at that. And what they do is it’s an age old dilemma about what am I going to do with these ashes or what do I do with the urn?

In fact, 26 percent of U.S. Households have urns in them. A lot of ’em are like up on the top shelf in the closet, way at the back in a cardboard box with blankets stacked on them, or in an attic, that somebody’s gonna inherit someday. The cremated remains of, you know, Aunt Somebody and…

Kevin Berk: The rest are on the mantle.

Seth: Yeah, Yeah. but it’s kind of a dilemma or even, okay.

If we’re going to go scatter these, where do we do that? And where’s it, where are we allowed to, and, you know, stand, upwind, not downwind and, there’s handling concerns, if you will. And parting stones has really gone a long way to demystify that. And in fact, make handling of cremated remains quite enjoyable, quite tactile, and even soothing.

 Parting stones or solidified remains takes the ashes or the cremated remains and uses a ceramic adhesive to create a stone from them. And then there’s like a firing process, like you would creating a glass or clay or pottery, and I’m not at all an expert at any of that, but the makeup of a parting stone is actually 98 percent cremated remains and 2 percent ceramic adhesive.

And so environmentally speaking, there’s not anything grossly, negatively environmentally impactful that I can think of about this. the process is pretty contained. It’s pretty small scale, amount that we’re talking about firing here. So the process takes the cremated remains from a flame cremation, a water cremation, Or even a terramation and takes the skeletal remains and creates those into stones. With terramation. I want to share with you that we were working in partnership with a family who has allowed us to work with parting stones at the midway point in a terramation process, there is a reduction of the bones that occurs.

I shared with you that the body is placed in the vessel, surrounded with the wood chips, the straw and the alfalfa and the tea and then our process is about a 60 day process for that, full uh, composting or terramation to occur. And at the midway of that, about 30 days in, we sift through the material.

And we collect the bones but we reduce the bone to a powder form to put it back in the soil so that it is biologically available to the microbes. And at that stage, we’re currently conducting a trial that we’re doing in concert with this family who requested it and parting stone To solidify terramated skeletal remains.

And so it is a very important process. it’s very significant to families. I’ve heard of, children carrying a stone of a parent. It generally makes 60 to 80 stones and they’ll pick up a stone every day and put it in a stone in their pocket of a parent and go to school and then come home at the end of the day and put the stone back in a loving spot.

So they do help people process. It’s just another new alternative.

Innovative Memorial Options

Kevin Berk: You mentioned that there’s just a lot of innovative stuff that may not be ready for prime time that you’ve been hearing about. Are there any of those that are interesting that people should really be considering?

Seth: Yeah well it’s interesting, Kevin, because some of those are considerations on the front side of our disposition like a mushroom suit would be something we would shroud our body in as a symbolic gesture where bringing those, spores and that, mycelium network to help in the return of our body to the earth. I’ll share with you. We don’t use those in our green burials. We choose to use just. A natural cloth. We wouldn’t be opposed to those because they would obviously decompose fine. But in a, green burial, we don’t actually emphasize a speed of the decomposition of the body or the return of the elements of the body back to being bioavailable.

We honor the natural aspects of that process. and because the body is going to remain in situ permanently, there’s not really a need to accelerate that, it’s always going to be in that location. I will share with you that as a part of our terramation process, we do inoculate the vessel with, with fungal spores.

So I’m a big believer in their place as helping with decay in the cycle of life. But from a product perspective, We don’t kind of sell or encourage the need for that. we kind of look at them as like the big foam finger at the sporting event where you, you might feel like feel good about your gesture of support, but in reality, you’re not impacting the outcome of the game.

Natural Death Care Products

Seth: to speak to other products though, certainly in natural death care, there are, willow carriers that are, options, that people can choose instead of a casket. And there are lots of natural products that people can work with. Of course, essential oils instead of embalming fluids would be another natural approach. and then things do get interesting on the other side of death care, going back to parting stones where, people take the cremated remains, the remains that they get back and, and memorialize those in, in some thing that they’re going to interact with in their, in their coming days. And I think your audience might agree, interacting with ash cremated remains is tricky, but 26 percent of households have cremated remains in them.

And so it’s a common consideration. Parting stones have been a cool, Introduction, on the scene because people put them in their pockets and do all kinds of things as we talked about, but, other options are diamonds where actually cremated remains can be compressed and put into a diamond form.

And there’s a. A partner of ours called Eternova that offers that service. And then there are local artists that we work with who blow glass pieces that contain ash or cremated remains from a fire cremation or water cremation or terramation We have local potters that use the regenerative living soil that our bodies become.

And so some families might, Return some of that soil to nature and some might use some of that earth to actually create a vessel that their family is going to use that’s made from their body. and then maybe the last piece I’d love to share about, there’s a, local boulder. Colorado artist that we work with who does. oil painting, and she in embeds cremated remains in the oil paint. And then creates an inspired image and she’ll co-create those with the family, so that the family has input and really the life of the person being included in the painting has input and that artist’s name is Alli Suter and she just does beautiful work. but yeah, those, are some things, Kevin, that people choose to do.

Kevin Berk: Thank you for explaining that. I mean, it makes the decision even harder because some of these are such appealing things to do and to think about doing them personally or for your loved ones. At some point you’ve got to make a choice, but it’s amazing that there are so many artisans who are doing such creative, amazing things that can really speak to people abouthow want to remember or keep their loved ones around.

Seth: It really is special and it’s really independent to each of us, right? And, and it’s kind of cool that to some people, a jewelry piece might be the most fitting way to keep their loved one close. and we have one family that had a set of coffee mugs made from the earthenware from the body of their person that they were fired and glazed.

And they’re beautiful. And every morning this, this wife drinks coffee with her husband.

Kevin Berk: That is so cool. Oh my gosh. Amazing.

Working with Death Doulas

Kevin Berk: You also through TheNaturalFuneral.com work with death doulas death midwives to help people on either end of losing people’s… people’s loved ones, right?

Seth: We do, we do. it’s important to us. One of our, founding principles is. A united community and empowering families to look at the end of life or a funeral service or this season, holistically and and find a way to curate services.

Aligned with people’s values. And so death doulas are something that are very supportive in that as people maybe have received a prognosis or they’re coming to terms with, a terminal illness. sometimes sudden, sometimes gradually, but doulas help. in of course, a non medical more, emotional, spiritual family unit support way.

And so we absolutely advocate for, for the inclusion of a doula in a family’s end of life process if that’s within their, Reach but holistically, we have, grief counselors that, that we work really closely with, we have a non denominational chaplain who is a part of our staff and we, we offer, support services.

Before, during, and after the funeral with a family, and our goal there is not to be a long term, resource, but more of an acute connector that’s dealing with this moment of grief and then helping that family find the right connections for ongoing. therapy, which may may help in in their grief process.

 it’s really just been responding to the, questions from the family. and when we get enough requests for. you know, maybe a grief group following the loss of a child, we assemble one and we bring in a resource that can connect our community. So, I’ll humbly give thanks to the people who come and are brave enough to ask for what they need.

Kevin Berk: Yeah.

Availability of Terramation and Water Cremation

Terramation Legality and Availability

Kevin Berk: We talked a lot about human composting, terramation. I wanted to understand a little bit more because it seems like right now, human composting is legal in 12 states. It’s Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon and Vermont, and then it’s been introduced in 13 others.

I think one of the things, Seth, that I’m trying to get at is, anybody who’s watching or listening and interested in these things, they may not know whether or not they’re available,

to, um, figure out whether or not what they want is something that is 1) offered in their state or 2) whether it is legal to come to you from out of state and there’s a way to bring back those remains over state lines.

Seth: Thanks for for helping hone that question. So, as you mentioned, terramation is legal in 12 states, but There are actually operators performing the function in 3 states. So, Washington, Colorado, and Nevada. And specifically the Seattle metro area, the Denver metro area, and the Las Vegas metro areas all have terramation operators and they range in capacity from, 20 or so vessels in a metro to, 150 or so vessels in a metro from multiple providers, but those are currently really the only places that people can access terramation.

What I’ll share with you is that some of the providers of natural organic reduction, would suggest that a family would fly their loved one to them for the terramation process, and then the family could receive back all or a token of the soil. And we’ve sort of taken a counter perspective to that where we’re trying to empower funeral homes and cemeteries and crematories to provide this.

And so what that’s going to lead to is a growing set of providers and Kevin, I’ll share with you, we’re already building, out. A network that’s going to be deployed in April in Arizona, in the Phoenix market space, and we’re in an early design on a Minneapolis St. Paul deployment. That’ll be a large, support for terramation in that geo.

And then there are a couple of other, one in the Northeast, and one in the Pacific Northwest where we’re working for other operators to open facilities. it would be naive of us to think that there aren’t other innovators who are concurrently working on plans to open new facilities. So some of it is a matter of the technology getting to the state where legislation has passed.

Some of it is waiting for regulations to be written once legislation has passed. California is a good example there. Where terramation or natural organic reduction became legislatively available in 2022 and the regulators said, wait a second, we’ll have the regulations ready on January 1st of 2027, giving themselves a five year window from the passage of the law until the implementation of the first provider.

But we’ve already been in conversations with California department of public health about. systems that will be installed and deployed early in 2027. So what we’re seeing is 13 states, as you mentioned, that have proposed legislation and will be considered sometime in this, legislative session.

And some of those will pass, and some of them will punt to next year, and more states will introduce along the way. But the trend line that we’re seeing shows that four states passed new legislation last year, and likely six or eight will pass new legislation this year. And likely eight or twelve will pass new legislation next year.

And so the, the up into the right, ramp on this is, is really significant.

 and it’s a technology that was illegal everywhere in the country five years ago. And, and, and so that really is a quick adoption, if you will, in an ancient industry.

Kevin Berk: Yeah, it seems like it. Yeah, it seems like it.

Seth: Okay Yeah it is

Social media and the interest of the youth and really the impact environmentally that this option makes when compared to other options.

It really makes a statement, about, efficacy of an environmental return of our body

Water Cremation Legality and Availability

Seth: and then I’ll shift to, water cremation, which, it would be important for your, your viewers, you’d want to search for water cremation or alkaline hydrolysis. If that’s the service you’re looking for.

And that’s legal in 28 states. With a few additional states that will consider new legislation this year, but of those 20 States, only about half of them have operators. And so it really is a sluggish, industry that is slowly, embracing these new technologies. And from the consumer side, the want, is much faster, I think, than operators are able to open new facilities, which leads to the dynamic. Kevin, you shared about people coming from other States, So operating from a place of curiosity and, being wildly in favor of supporting the clients.

requests I found it interesting when someone shared as an environmentalist, I’d like to fly my body from New Jersey to Colorado when I die. And I thought, well, gosh, most people wouldn’t think a plane ride like that as an act of of environmental consciousness. But this person viewed that action as activism.

And as a proponent of awareness, and he said, if I don’t do this, who’s going to do it, if I don’t make New Jersey, New Jerseyans and so aware that, I’m so in favor of this and I’ve researched it and I know it’s right for me that I’m willing to get on an existing commercial flight, not a charter flight, but I’ll get on an existing flight that was already going to go from New Jersey to Colorado.

And it’s that important to me to make the statement. And I felt it in this call with this person from New Jersey. And since then, Kevin, of the 175 or so terramations we’ve done approaching a quarter of those have come from outside of Colorado, from folks where they can’t get this, but they want it.

And the farthest that we’ve had someone come from is actually Indonesia and a requirement for terramation is that the body be unenbalmed And so. All of the shipments of these decedents we’ve orchestrated in a natural way.

And I’ll share with your audience that it is legal to send a body across state lines, across 49 state lines, you can send an unembalmed body, with the one exception being the state of Alabama, which does not allow an unembalmed body to enter or leave the state.

Kevin Berk: Seth, thank you for all of that informtaion, that’s so good to understand the legality and the options that are available. It gives people a lot to consider and research on their own to figure out whether their state is going to allow for the thing they want to do.

Comparing Pros, Cons, & Costs

Kevin Berk: So, in our remaining time that we have together, I would love to get into what you see as the, and this is a big ask. I know, Pros, Cons, and Costs, between conventional burial, green burial, flame cremation.

Seth: Yeah, Kevin, I’d love to get into that and we’re really transparent with this. Everything I’m about to tell you is publicly available on our website. and I encourage any, funeral home, please do your customers that favor of, of allowing them the gift of being able to. Research you and find out some preliminary information before they have to pick up that 500 pound phone and make a difficult call. I also want to encourage folks to connect with a group called a funeral consumer society. Most states have a Colorado Funeral Consumer Society or New Jersey Funeral Consumer Society and those are the groups that take the voice of the public and amplify it to legislators.

And so if you have a want for empowering your community to have access to something, you don’t have to be dying. And in fact, it’s helpful if, if you’re not, and you can participate in this campaign. we need voices and we need advocates out there. and I know your audience, Kevin, would, would be the right kind of hearts and hands to hear that request and, and bring what they need to their communities.

So, so when we talk about like the, the pros and the cons, and the costs of each option, I’ll share with you that, I’m going to give you our retail prices and our prices tend to be on the full service end of the spectrum. we have brick and mortar facilities and we have licensed directors and we have, staff vehicles and onsite, body cooling and beautiful facilities.

And our goal is not to be the cheapest of any option in the area. Our goal is to meet each family eye level right at their needs. I’ll share with you cremation. Sometimes you can get them for as cheap as a thousand dollars or so in your town. And that’s typically going to involve. Maybe not much interaction with the funeral home, but more of like a transport service and maybe help with registering the death with the state and then return of cremated remains generally by mail.

And of course, we involve families and we, pick up, loved ones and, you know, leave flowers with their, family as, a touch point to them as we bring them into our care and shelter for the, the process. the cons of, flame cremation are that it’s also pretty consumptive and it also pollutes. it’s not uncommon for, you know, whole caskets to be cremated or, leather shoes or or rubber soled shoes or, even metals that are that are in our bodies. and so that generally goes through scrubbers, but ultimately it’s going to go out a chimney.

Our body is going to convert from solid and liquid to gas and By definition, that’s pollution. And so that that’s a con. The Pro to flame cremation is, it’s available almost anywhere. Everybody’s heard of it. And it’s almost always going to be the lowest cost. where. water cremation in, in our model is $4,400 and the pro to that is that the environmental impacts are dramatically different from flame cremation.

There’s still a production cost, a carbon impact to the production of the chemicals that are used in alkaline hydrolysis, but because there’s no emissions. And because we don’t use natural gas, we use a very small amount of electricity for movement in our vessel. so it’s very energy efficient, it causes no pollution and the essence of our body can be captured and reapplied to the earth and given to plants as a biostimulant.

So that’s very much a pro that people find with water cremation. A con is it can cost a little bit more. and it’s not as accessible. It’s just not as available state to state as flame cremation. And then, terramation I’ll talk about next. And we just shared about how that’s the least available option.

Its cost is $8,900 dollars. And that’s because it’s a biologically managed process that’s going to take two to a little over two months timeframe with almost daily interaction from a certified natural reductionist. And so the, labor intensity is, is higher in this process.

The duration is much longer. The cost is higher. But by far, the environmental impact is, the most advantageous. And what I mean by that, Kevin, is that in the process of natural organic reduction, we don’t produce carbon emissions. We actually sequester 1, 003 pounds of carbon for every process that we conduct.

And so, that is why people from far and wide are, are tending to resonate with this.

 terramation people perceive as slower, gentler, more gradual and really relatable, because we’ve all had a yard with maybe the deciduous leaves that fell and they, they rested in our yard in autumn.

And then in the spring, they had become humus and, were beginning to break down and we’re a part of The soil level and we might’ve even seen a ladybug crawl across the leaf and we can envision, okay, that’s what’s happening in terramation. It’s no different than that leaf that left that tree that that ladybug found refuge on.

And, and so there’s, there’s a perception that I know exactly where I’m going in the cycle of life when I choose this process. And then the last option that I’ll touch on with you is green burial. And, and we don’t really offer what I would consider conventional burial or traditional burial with a big casket in a vault and embalming. our transport cars tend to be, EVs and minivans and less hearses and limousines. and so our burials tend to be natural and green and use shrouds and hand lowering and, and less, uh,

Kevin Berk: Equipment.

Seth: and, equipment. That’s right. That’s right. And so our green burial, service is $4,400 plus the plot And I say plus the plot.

because there are plots for $1,000 and there are plots for $50,000 And so there’s an enormous range that people can select. and then and then the only other additional cost to a green burial would be the natural material that folks are going to be buried in. And of course, we have shrouds that are silk and bamboos and hemps and woven and they’re gorgeous.

And sometimes people say, this was my favorite blanket and this is what I want to be wrapped in. And we’ve had people who’ve crocheted their own shrouds that we’ve eventually wrapped them in. So what, your body is buried in can be as expensive as free if you so choose.

Personal Reflections on End-of-Life Choices

Kevin Berk: Seth, I keep thinking about the fellow that you mentioned who is prepared to have his body flown across state lines so that he could get the method of final disposition that really spoke to him.

And, I really hope we get to a place soon where it doesn’t require that level of travel and it doesn’t require that extra stress and these things are available to each of us in every state because there’s benefits to all the things that we’ve talked about from green burial to alkaline hydrolysis to terramation that it really has given us a lot to ponder and talk about with our loved ones about what we want for ourselves and what they want for themselves.

Seth: Kevin you’ve done a really fun job in this interview of threading together some really important factors that people need to and maybe they’re just learning through your podcast that they even could or should have. self-determination about what’s going to eventually happen with their body. and some people find peace in that some people find closure in that some people find joy in that.

And, so I think the topics that we’ve considered, like. The spectrum of care leading up to one’s passing, the support that you can have and the ways that your community can hold you through that journey, the things that people can choose to do with the remains that they receive back are so personal and unique, how they choose to give their body back to the earth through burial or through one of these other more rapidly transformative methods. the way that they choose to hold that in a stone or scatter that as ashes or have it made into jewelry that rests at their heart is so deeply personal. And Kevin, it’s been one of my favorite parts of our conversation is the holistic consideration. And so I think that the, angles with which you’re, you’re challenging your audience to consider What do I want to happen before I die who do I want to be? Around me in my final moments, if I’m able to, have, agency in that, where do I want my passing to occur? what do I want to happen after my passing occurs? How do I want my community to come together? how do I want my body to be handled naturally at home or, or by professionals somewhere, and, and not with a, there’s not a right or wrong answer.

These are just deeply personal. Then one, what’s gonna happen to my body? will it, will I be soil? Will I be cremated remains? And, and then who’s gonna do something with those remains? And, yeah, I think it’s really sweet for folks to really open their minds up to what’s possible. So thanks for the way you framed this.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Kevin Berk: Yeah, I, and I so appreciate, I can’t thank you enough for all of the knowledge and humanity that you’ve brought to the conversation. It’s endlessly fascinating to me. It’s a subject that was, for a long time really scary to me. It’s probably still scary to a lot of people, but when you hear and explore some of these alternatives, they really become almost a creative expression of how you want your time on this earth to end or even continue on in some fashion. And so, I think it’s really turned a corner for me personally from being something that’s morbid or scary into something that’s, dare I say, exciting, and creative, and appealing. I know that probably sounds strange but I would hazard a guess that I’m not the only person who thinks that this stuff is very cool, and and very progressive.

Seth: Thanks for that reflection, Kevin. I think you’re right that we’re, at a tipping point right now in, our humanity and the way that we choose to bravely look our mortality in the eye. And I think that there are a wave of educators and doulas and funeral providers and podcast hosts and, community that are helping us to.

bravely collectively look at that light and see what’s possible and see how we can make shifts at a personal level in our community and in a global level environmentally. And, what a fascinating time this is to be a funeral consumer, to be death positive, to be curious about these things.

And so. gosh, Kevin, this has been a blast. And I, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I encourage your, audience to keep a song in their heart.

Kevin Berk: Well, I look forward to talking to you in the future, Seth. It’s been a wonderful conversation together and a wonderful exploration of important topics and we’ve covered a lot, so thank you. thank you, thank you!

Seth: Thank you, Kevin.