Composting, not cremating?

All dogs go to heaven. Their bodies, however, are another matter. And when dealing with those, pet owners have options aplenty: Cremation, burial at a pet cemetery, taxidermy, even freeze-drying or turning their ashes into synthetic diamonds.

Now comes another: Composting. A start-up in Washington state, Rooted Pet, says its new service is something the "pet aftercare space" has been lacking — and one owners can feel good about. Letting kitty decompose in a mixture of organic matter uses less energy than firing up a cremation oven, requires less land than a graveyard and is a poignant, dust-to-dust type of process, general manager Paul Tschetter says.

With cremation, "you're quite literally vaporizing the soft tissues .?.?. it's pulverized and put in a cute box and given back," said Tschetter, whose firm is located outside Olympia, Wash. "I feel like we're adding more meaning back into this whole death process."

This could be a mental hurdle for many grieving pet owners, but Tschetter is probably onto something. The $67 billion pet industry includes a growing aftercare segment catering to owners who, after spending lots keeping animals they consider family members happy and alive, are willing to go to extra lengths when the pets die. More than 700 pet cemeteries and crematoriums in the United States are one testament to the demand.

"If you're in this business right now," Tom Flynn, the president of Hillcrest-Flynn Pet Funeral Home and Crematory in Hermitage, Penn., told Bloomberg Businessweek in 2012, "you're just sailing with the wind right at your back."

Tschetter calls himself as a "serial entrepreneur," who, with a friend who had years of experience in waste management and composting, realized a few years ago that there might be room for new ideas in this market. Composting animal carcasses, they knew, is far from unusual — it's the method many farms use to dispose of deceased livestock, and it's how some states now contend with roadkill.

Donated farm animals, as well as some collected roadkill, were what Rooted used as "test subjects" for their composting system, Tschetter said. The system is based at his business partner's farm, but it's indoors, which helps Rooted avoid some regulatory hurdles that would come with composting bodies outside. Pet carcasses are placed in boxlike "pods" with wood chips and other organic matter, Tschetter said. Six to eight weeks later, it has morphed into rich soil that looks, smells and feels like any other compost, he said.

People who decide composting their dead pet is right for them can choose from several end products. Let Rooted keep the compost and it will use it on its farm or on a tree-planting project. Get your composted pet back (alone or, for a lower price, mixed with other pets), and you can use it to nourish a new tree in your yard. If that seems a bit too hands-on, Rooted Pet (rootedpet.com) can send you a houseplant growing in compost created from your beloved animal's remains.

It would be, Tschetter said, a "living memorial."