How COVID-19 Changed Attitudes Toward Alternative Disposition (colloquially referred to as human composting)

COVID-19 accelerated several shifts that benefit the alternative disposition movement: increased pre-planning rates, greater comfort with simplified funeral arrangements, and higher consumer awareness of NOR, green burial, and aquamation. The pandemic did not cause terramation adoption directly, but it loosened assumptions about traditional funerals and created lasting openness to alternatives.

COVID-19 forced Americans to rethink death in ways the country had not experienced in a generation. When the pandemic peaked, funeral homes were overwhelmed, traditional burial timelines became impossible in hard-hit areas, and millions of families found themselves grieving without access to the rituals they had always assumed would be available. What emerged from that disruption — in ways that have persisted beyond the pandemic itself — was a significant shift in how many Americans think about their own end-of-life choices, the necessity of traditional funeral practices, and the appeal of simpler, more personally meaningful alternatives. For the natural organic reduction (NOR) industry, the timing proved particularly significant.

How did COVID-19 change attitudes toward alternative funeral disposition like terramation?

COVID-19 did not directly cause NOR adoption, but it accelerated four durable shifts that benefit the alternative disposition movement: higher pre-planning rates, greater comfort with simplified funeral arrangements, stronger environmental consciousness, and normalization of hybrid and virtual memorial services. Washington's NOR law took effect May 1, 2020 — coinciding with peak pandemic disruption — and the first commercial NOR providers opened in 2021 into an environment of unusual public interest in death-care alternatives.

COVID-era funeral disruption — overwhelmed funeral homes, impossible timelines, no-ceremony cremations — forced families to question which traditional practices actually mattered to them.
Direct cremation (the simplest, least expensive option) grew significantly during the pandemic and some of that growth has persisted, signaling lasting comfort with simplified arrangements.
Pre-planning rates increased during COVID as millions of Americans confronted mortality and began documenting end-of-life wishes — pre-planners are the audience most likely to choose NOR.
Washington's NOR law took effect May 1, 2020 and the first commercial NOR facilities opened in 2021 — coinciding with peak public interest in alternative death practices.
COVID normalized hybrid and virtual memorials, reducing the assumption that the body must be physically present in a traditional setting — this benefits NOR's different relationship to body presence.
The most durable COVID legacies for death care: higher pre-planning rates, greater awareness of alternatives, and permanently normalized digital/hybrid memorial formats.

What Was the Pandemic’s Immediate Impact on Death Care?

When COVID-19 arrived in the United States in early 2020, death care was among the first industries to face consequences it had not planned for. In hard-hit areas — New York City, northern New Jersey, parts of California and Michigan — crematories and funeral homes faced a scale of death that their infrastructure was not designed to handle. Refrigerated trucks served as temporary morgues. Wait times for cremation stretched to weeks. Traditional burial — with its requirements for embalming, casket selection, viewings, and cemetery scheduling — was often simply not possible within normal timeframes.

For many families, COVID meant their loved one was cremated without ceremony, buried without a viewing, or memorialized only on video. It was a profound rupture with expected funeral custom. And for a significant number of those families, it prompted a question they had never seriously considered before: why were those rituals the default in the first place?

What Did Forced Simplicity Reveal About What Families Actually Value?

One of the counterintuitive outcomes of pandemic-era funerals was that many families discovered they preferred simplified arrangements. When a graveside service had to be small and private by necessity, some families found it felt more intimate and meaningful than a large formal funeral would have. When embalming was skipped because of timeline constraints, some families found they did not miss it.

This experience of forced simplicity did not convert everyone into a green burial advocate overnight. But it did — for a measurable number of families — loosen the assumption that elaborate traditional funerals are the only way to honor a death meaningfully. That loosened assumption created cognitive space for exploring alternatives, including green burial, direct cremation, and NOR.

The National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) noted in its post-pandemic consumer research that direct cremation — the simplest and least expensive form of cremation, involving no formal ceremony or viewing — saw significant growth during the pandemic, with some of that growth persisting afterward. Consumer comfort with simpler disposition accelerated under COVID conditions.

How Did Pre-Planning Change During the Pandemic?

COVID made death visible and personal in a way that prompted millions of Americans to think about their own end-of-life planning. Estate attorneys, hospice organizations, and funeral homes across the country reported increased inquiries about pre-need funeral arrangements, advance directives, and end-of-life documentation during 2020 and 2021.

This pre-planning surge had a direct benefit for the alternative disposition movement. Consumers actively planning their own funerals — as opposed to families making urgent decisions after a death — have more time to research options, compare alternatives, and make choices that reflect their values rather than convention. Pre-planners are the audience most likely to choose NOR, green burial, or aquamation, because they are making deliberate rather than default decisions.

The interest in pre-planning that COVID accelerated has not entirely dissipated. For more on how families can pre-plan a terramation, see How to Pre-Plan a Terramation.

How Did Environmental Consciousness and COVID Reinforce Each Other?

The pandemic period coincided with what many observers characterized as a high-water mark of public environmental consciousness. The first year of COVID saw unusual visibility of environmental news: air quality improvements over locked-down cities, wildlife visible in urban spaces, and a moment of national reflection on the relationship between human activity and the natural world.

For consumers who arrived at the pandemic already oriented toward environmental values, this period reinforced the connection between their daily choices and their end-of-life choices. If minimizing environmental footprint mattered in how they ate, traveled, and consumed, it seemed consistent to extend that commitment to how they were buried or disposed of.

NOR, with its emphasis on returning the body to the earth as healthy soil, was well-positioned to resonate with this audience — if they knew it existed.

Why Did Washington State’s NOR Law Timing Matter?

One of the striking coincidences of NOR history is that Washington state’s NOR law — SB 5001, signed by Governor Inslee in 2019 — took effect on May 1, 2020, just as the first COVID wave was reshaping American life. The first commercial NOR facility in Seattle opened to families in late 2021.

The overlap in timing was accidental, but the effect was not nothing. COVID-era media coverage of death and dying created unusual public appetite for stories about alternative approaches to the end of life. NOR, as the newest and most novel alternative, attracted significant press coverage during a period when audiences were paying unusually close attention to death-related topics.

For a deeper look at that legislative history, see How Washington Became the First State to Legalize Terramation.

How Did COVID Change Attitudes Toward Body Presence and Ritual?

COVID also changed — for some families permanently — the assumption that physical presence of the body is a necessary part of grief. With many COVID deaths occurring in hospitals or care facilities where families had limited or no access, and with viewing and embalming sometimes impractical or unavailable, families developed new ways of saying goodbye. Virtual memorial services became common. Delayed celebrations of life, held weeks or months after death, became normalized.

This shift matters for NOR specifically because NOR has a different relationship to the body than traditional burial or cremation. The body is not present for viewing in a traditional sense during the NOR process. Families receive approximately one-half cubic yard of soil as the outcome — a tangible but transformed return of the body. For families whose experience of COVID grief did not include traditional viewing, this form of return may feel meaningful rather than unfamiliar.

What Has Lasted

The COVID-era changes to American death attitudes did not all persist with equal intensity. Some of the simplicity of pandemic funerals has receded as restrictions lifted and traditional practices resumed. But certain shifts appear durable:

Pre-planning rates are higher than pre-pandemic baseline, as more Americans have made concrete plans rather than leaving decisions to families.
Consumer interest in alternatives to traditional burial is higher and more informed than before 2020 — more people have heard of NOR, aquamation, and green burial.
Comfort with simplified arrangements has increased — fewer families require elaborate traditional services to feel that a death has been honored appropriately.
Digital and hybrid memorial services have become a permanent option, enabling participation from family members who cannot travel, which in turn makes NOR’s different approach to the body less logistically unusual.

The death-care industry that emerged from COVID is one with a broader menu of options, a more questioning consumer base, and a growing interest in alternatives that would have been unfamiliar to most Americans just a decade ago.

FAQ

Did COVID directly cause interest in NOR to increase?

COVID did not directly cause NOR adoption, but it did accelerate several cultural shifts — simplicity, pre-planning, environmental awareness, and comfort with non-traditional death practices — that benefit the NOR movement. The timing of Washington’s NOR law (effective May 1, 2020) and the opening of the first commercial NOR providers (2021) meant the country’s first operational NOR facilities launched during an unusual moment of public interest in alternative death practices.

How did COVID change funeral practices long-term?

The most durable changes appear to be: increased pre-planning rates, greater consumer comfort with simplified funeral arrangements, normalization of hybrid and virtual memorial services, and higher overall awareness of alternative disposition options. Traditional practices remain dominant, but the share of consumers who are open to alternatives has grown.

Did the NFDA track COVID’s impact on funeral preferences?

Yes, the NFDA conducted consumer research tracking how the pandemic affected funeral preferences and planning. The data showed growth in direct cremation, increased interest in pre-planning, and growing openness to non-traditional options. See NFDA.org for current consumer research publications.

Is now a good time to pre-plan a terramation?

Yes — if you live in a state where NOR is currently legal and operational, pre-planning for terramation is possible through licensed providers. For families in states where NOR is legal but not yet operational (California, New York, New Jersey), pre-need interest can be registered with providers as they prepare to launch. Contact TerraCare Partners for guidance on current availability.

Where is NOR currently available?

NOR is currently available in Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, Nevada, Arizona, Maryland, Delaware, Minnesota, Maine, and Georgia. California, New York, and New Jersey have passed laws but are not yet operational. See the state guides for current availability.

Learn more about terramation providers near you — contact TerraCare Partners to explore your options.

Ready to explore terramation options? Contact TerraCare Partners — reach out here.

Sources

NFDA — Consumer Awareness and Preferences Research (multiple years). https://nfda.org/news/statistics
NFDA — 2025 Cremation & Burial Report. https://nfda.org/news/statistics
Washington State Department of Health — NOR Licensing and Provider Resources. https://doh.wa.gov/
Washington State Legislature — SB 5001 (2019), effective May 1, 2020. https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5001&Year=2019
Washington State Department of Health — WAC 246-500 Natural Organic Reduction. https://app.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=246-500
National Public Radio — Coverage of COVID-19 and funeral industry disruption. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/
The New York Times — Reporting on COVID-era funeral practice changes. https://www.nytimes.com/
NFDA — “COVID-19 and the Funeral Industry: An Assessment” (industry resource). https://nfda.org/
Order of the Good Death — Resources on COVID and death culture. https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/
Green Burial Council — Green disposition trends and provider data. https://www.greenburialcouncil.org/