{"id":5794,"date":"2025-10-10T10:43:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T14:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/?p=5794"},"modified":"2025-10-10T10:43:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T14:43:51","slug":"a-greener-garden-state-human-composting-legalized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/a-greener-garden-state-human-composting-legalized.html","title":{"rendered":"A Greener Garden State: Human Composting Legalized"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On September 12th, 2025, Governor Murphy legalized &#8220;natural organic reduction&#8221; making New Jersey the 14th state to permit the composting of human bodies as an alternative to traditional burial or cremation. While the Board of Mortuary Science has yet to issue regulations which will govern the process, funeral businesses are expected to become licensed and start offering this service, also known as &#8220;controlled supervised decomposition,&#8221; by July 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Advocates state that human composting is environmentally friendly because it does not use toxic embalming chemicals, uses less energy, and releases less carbon into the atmosphere than cremation. It also requires less land and leaves less of a carbon footprint than traditional burial.<\/p>\n<p>Human composting uses a closed reusable vessel, along with other organic materials, to encourage natural decomposition over a 30 to 45 day process. Approximately 1 cubic meter of nutrient rich soil is created to support the ecosystem. Safety protocols, consumer protections, as well as how and where the transformed soil can be utilized will be clarified in the regulations.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/a-greener-garden-state-human-composting-legalized.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading A Greener Garden State: Human Composting Legalized\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On September 12th, 2025, Governor Murphy legalized &#8220;natural organic reduction&#8221; making New Jersey the 14th state to permit the composting of human bodies as an alternative to traditional burial or cremation. While the Board of Mortuary Science has yet to issue regulations which will govern the process, funeral businesses are expected to become licensed and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,65,343],"tags":[],"coauthors":[177],"class_list":["post-5794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manzo","category-insights","category-wills-trusts-estates-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Greener Garden State: Human Composting Legalized &#8212; October 10, 2025 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On September 12th, 2025, Governor Murphy legalized &quot;natural organic reduction&quot; making New Jersey the 14th state to permit the composting of human bodies\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/a-greener-garden-state-human-composting-legalized.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Greener Garden State: Human Composting Legalized &#8212; October 10, 2025 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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