The first time Laura Muckenhoupt felt a glimmer of hope after the death of her 22-year-old son Miles was the drive home from the Washington state facility that had turned his body into hundreds of pounds of soil.
"We're going to grow him," she remembered thinking. "We're going to grow him, and we're going to continue to be his parents and his sister and his friends."
Human composting turns bodies into soil by speeding up "what happens on the forest floor," according to Tom Harries, CEO of Earth Funeral, the human composting company the Muckenhoupt family worked with.
"What we're doing is accelerating a completely natural process," Harris told CNN. Human composting is emerging as an end-of-life alternative that is friendlier to the climate and the Earth — it is far less carbon-intensive than cremation and doesn't use chemicals involved to preserve bodies in traditional burials.
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📸 : John Naccarato/Earth Funeral
Sustainable construction is moving from exemplar projects to market-wide system design, with clean steel emerging as a critical test for whole life carbon policy. A new study suggests the global shift to low-carbon steel could be achieved without raising consumer costs through a revenue-neutral policy model, strengthening the case for low embodied carbon materials in mainstream procurement.
For contractors, developers and public clients, the issue is no longer whether green building materials can perform, but how governments can de-risk low carbon construction materials, reduce the carbon footprint of construction and support net zero whole life carbon targets without shielding high-emission incumbents.
The UK retrofit agenda is becoming central to environmental sustainability in construction. The National Retrofit Hub’s call for a stronger framework comes as electricity and gas prices begin to decouple, improving the life cycle cost case for heat pumps, energy-efficient buildings and electrified homes.
Retrofit policy now needs consistent standards, skilled delivery capacity and consumer protection, backed by whole life carbon assessment, lifecycle assessment and better evidence on building lifecycle performance. Public support for requiring data centres to share waste heat with nearby homes signals a shift in sustainable urban development, treating rejected heat as green infrastructure rather than waste.
Climate adaptation is also reshaping sustainable building practices. GRAHAM’s appointment to deliver the Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme highlights rising investment in resilience, while reports of roads melting in eastern England expose the environmental impact of construction decisions based on historic weather assumptions.
The built environment is being asked to cut embodied carbon in materials while improving durability against heat, flooding and infrastructure stress. The strongest response will combine sustainable building design, low carbon design, circular economy in construction, sustainable material specification, environmental product declarations (EPDs) and end-of-life reuse in construction. BREEAM, BREEAM v7 and other performance frameworks are likely to play a growing role as clients demand net zero carbon buildings, resource efficiency in construction and credible carbon footprint reduction across the full asset lifecycle.
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