FOURTEEN STATES, ONE LICENSING DEAL: A Colorado Company Is Quietly Building the First National Human Composting Network

On July 15, 2026, The Natural Funeral, Inc. announced two new partnerships under its TerraCare Partner Program. A.S. Turner and Sons, a funeral home in metropolitan Atlanta that has served families for more than a century, has installed the TerraCare System and expects final state certification. Sacred Soil, based in Vermont, is already operational as the first Terramation facility in New England.

The announcement means that Natural Organic Reduction, the process of transforming human remains into soil through controlled decomposition, is available for the first time in the Southeastern and Northeastern United States. Families in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Jacksonville, Boston, Burlington, Hartford, and Providence can now choose the option through local providers.

Where Terramation is now available is the announcement. How it is getting there is the investigation.

What the TerraCare System actually is

The Natural Funeral describes the TerraCare System as a turnkey solution. A funeral home that joins the program receives Chrysalis Terramation vessels, a proprietary organic additive called TerraTea, facility design, regulatory guidance, operational systems, training, certification, and ongoing technical support. The company built the system through its experience operating two funeral homes and a dedicated care center in Colorado, where it has performed what it describes as "hundreds of Terramation processes."

This is a manufacturer and licensor expanding. The Natural Funeral is selling the equipment, the materials, the training, and the brand infrastructure that lets any funeral home offer Terramation as a service. The partners, A.S. Turner and Sons and Sacred Soil, are the operators. The Natural Funeral is the supplier.

The difference matters. When cremation spread through the funeral industry in the twentieth century, it followed a similar path. Retort manufacturers sold equipment to funeral homes. Trade organizations provided training. The funeral homes ran the crematories. The Natural Funeral is applying that same model to Natural Organic Reduction, but with one critical difference: there is no competing supplier. The company owns the vessel design, the proprietary organic additive, the certification process, and the operational protocols. A funeral home that joins the TerraCare program has no alternative source for any of it.

The press release names five additional states where partnerships are under development: California, Arizona, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Maryland.

The competitive field

Several companies offer NOR. Only The Natural Funeral is building a licensing network.

Recompose, based in Seattle, operates a standalone facility. The company was the first to offer NOR commercially after Washington legalized the process in 2019. Recompose serves families directly at its own location.

Return Home opened Maryland's first human composting facility in 2026, serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The company operates its own facility.

Earth, licensed in California as FD-2530, offers soil transformation through its own facilities and an online portal. The company advertises "simple, transparent pricing" but does not publish dollar amounts on its website. Instead, it asks families to answer questions for an instant quote.

Each of these companies has chosen to operate its own facilities. The Natural Funeral has chosen to sell its system to existing funeral homes. If the TerraCare Partner Program scales, The Natural Funeral gains a foothold in every market it enters without the capital cost of building and staffing a facility. The partner funeral home gains a new service line. The family gains a local option.

The pricing question

The FTC Funeral Rule requires funeral homes to maintain a General Price List and provide it upon request. The rule does not require funeral homes to publish prices online. The proposed Funeral Rule rewrite, which Obitley has covered, may change that requirement.

For now, no NOR provider in the country publishes its pricing on its website. The Natural Funeral has a General Price List page. It lists service categories: Terramation, Water Cremation, Green Burial, Flame Cremation. It does not list dollar amounts. Earth advertises transparent pricing but routes families to a quote generator. Recompose and Return Home similarly require direct contact.

The absence of published pricing is consistent across the industry. It also means that families considering NOR cannot compare costs between providers without contacting each one individually. For a process that the press release describes as "the most environmentally beneficial form of final disposition available," the cost to the family is not something the industry is eager to advertise.

The Natural Funeral has not publicly disclosed Terramation pricing through its website or press materials.

The carbon claim

The Natural Funeral states that each Terramation performed in a TerraCare Chrysalis Vessel sequesters approximately one-half ton of carbon dioxide. The company presents this as a verifiable environmental benefit.

The claim appears in the July 15 press release without citation to an independent study, peer-reviewed research, or lifecycle analysis. The process involves placing human remains in a vessel with organic material, in this case the proprietary TerraTea, and managing the decomposition over a period of weeks. The resulting soil can be returned to families or used for land restoration.

Whether the process sequesters net carbon, and how much, depends on factors the press release does not address: the energy used to operate the facility, the emissions from transporting remains, the carbon content of the organic additive, and what happens to the soil after it is returned. An approximate figure presented without methodology is a marketing claim rather than a measured result.

What this means

The TerraCare announcement is significant for two reasons.

First, it brings NOR to regions of the country where it has never been available. Families in the Southeast and Northeast can now choose a disposition method that was, until recently, confined to the West Coast and Colorado. That is real.

Second, it establishes a business model that could shape how the NOR industry grows. If The Natural Funeral succeeds in licensing its system to funeral homes nationwide, the company becomes the dominant infrastructure provider for a category that did not exist seven years ago. Every TerraCare partner becomes a dependent on The Natural Funeral's proprietary vessels, proprietary additive, training, and certification. The funeral home gains a service. The Natural Funeral gains a recurring relationship.

Terramation is legal in fourteen states. More are considering legislation. The Natural Funeral is not racing to build facilities and serve families directly. It is selling the equipment, the materials, and the certification that every partner funeral home needs to offer human composting at all. If the market grows, the company positioned to profit most is not the one performing the most Terramations. It is the one that every other provider has to buy from first.