By Thomas A. Parmalee
When Seth Viddal founded The Natural Funeral in 2019, his goal was simple but radical: to help families reconnect with death in ways that reflected their environmental and spiritual values.
Now, just six years later, his Lafayette, Colorado–based funeral home is entering a new chapter — one that could help reshape how funeral homes across the country offer sustainable disposition options, including natural organic reduction, which it calls terramation.
With its TerraCare Partner Program, the company has pivoted to help funeral homes from throughout the country offer terramation to families with a turnkey system that gives them the equipment and skills they need to perform the process locally.
“We realized that our future isn’t just about being a funeral home,” Viddal explained. “It’s about empowering other funeral homes to meet the rising demand for eco-friendly options with confidence and integrity.”
A Personal Path to Purpose
Viddal’s journey into funeral service began in grief.
Within four years, he lost his stepfather who entered his life at age 10 – a Mescalero Apache Indian who loved the natural world – as well as his adopted brother and mother. Each death, he recalls, left him feeling that traditional funeral options did not honor who his family members truly were.
He had a close connection with his stepfather, Ramon Olachia who instilled in him a love for craftsmanship, Indian lore, basket weaving and leather tanning.
The man had been a huge part of Viddal’s life ever since his mother remarried, turning two Texas families into a blended household consisting of nine children – some that were brought into the marriage, some they had together and others they adopted.
After relishing a childhood spent outdoors, Viddal moved from Texas to Colorado, joining the Air Force at age 18.
In his mid-30s, he took a trip with his stepfather visiting various sites, such as the Crazy Horse Memorial, where the Battle of Little Big Horn was fought and other significant Native American historical sites. A week later, his stepfather died unexpectedly in his sleep.
“We went to the local funeral home that served my grandparents … the funeral director turned around to a metal filing cabinet, pulled out my grandfather’s file, and kind of without really giving it too much thought, we said, ‘This is what we will do,’” Viddal said.
When Viddal returned to Colorado, he started a construction company. Then, about a year later, his younger brother, Sam (who was adopted), died by suicide.
“Mom and I met again with the same gentleman at the same funeral home and planned the same funeral that we planned for dad,” he said.
In retrospect, he doesn’t think either funeral did them justice.
His stepfather loved the natural world and his American Indian heritage so much, and his brother was a very different person – a gay man growing up in conservative Texas who struggled with his identity.
“But we had the same cookie-cutter funeral,” he said.
About a year after his brother died, Viddal would repeat very much the same process for his mother, Carol Ann Swift Olachia, who also died suddenly and unexpectedly.
A New Chapter
After selling his construction business, Viddal went back to school to study psychology, religious studies and social entrepreneurship at Naropa University, a Buddhist-inspired liberal arts institution in Boulder.
He also began volunteering as a hospice worker, which led him to quickly identify a gap in care: families seeking environmentally conscious, participatory funeral options had nowhere to go.
That insight led to the founding of The Natural Funeral, a warm, light-filled funeral home built in a converted 1903 house.
At the funeral home, families are invited to care for their loved ones directly — washing, brushing hair and preparing them for burial, cremation or fireless cremation (alkaline hydrolysis).
When team members meet with families, they steer clear of asking family members whether they want burial or cremation – at least at first.
“Our first question is ‘Who was your person?’ and we follow that up with ‘What kind of spiritual beliefs did they have?’ and ‘What kind of life did they lead?’ and ‘What would they ask us to do if they had a seat at the table with us?’” Viddal said.
The funeral home soon became known throughout Colorado for its emphasis on hands-on, eco-conscious practices, including green burial and alkaline hydrolysis (also known as water cremation).
Bringing Terramation to Life
In 2019, just months after opening, The Natural Funeral became Colorado’s first provider of water cremation.
While many funeral homes that offer alkaline hydrolysis let the leftover bodily fluid go down the drain, The Natural Funeral applies it to the land as a bio-stimulant.
“This is what plants are looking for to build their bodies,” Viddal said. “Our process uses 12 gallons of water, and because it is so concentrated, that is how we are able to capture the person’s essence and transfer it to a farm.”
The funeral home’s alkaline hydrolysis unit is the size of a bathtub with a hydraulic arm that rocks the vessel, enabling it to carry out the process with a small amount of water.
Funeral home staff cremulate the bones and return the powdered remains to the family, collecting the liquid in a portable container.
Sometimes, a family opts to get back five or 10 gallons of the liquid to fertilize potted plants, an oak tree or a pasture that has been overgrazed or over-farmed. Other times, the funeral home uses the fluid for an industrial application to apply to dozens of acres, including a nearby dahlia farm.
Several years ago, Viddal and his team began exploring natural organic reduction, sometimes called terramation, or human composting (a term Viddal likes to avoid), which gently transforms human remains into nutrient-rich soil.
“We had families asking us, ‘You’re the green funeral people — are you going to offer this?’” Viddal said. “We knew we had to.”
Viddal and co-founder Dan Ziskin, an environmental scientist, began designing their own vessel for natural organic reduction long before it was legal in Colorado. They testified in support of the legislation that ultimately passed in 2021, making the state one of the first outside the Pacific Northwest to allow the process.
Viddal, the majority owner and chief operating officer of The Natural Funeral, remains impressed with Ziskin’s dedication to the planet. “He is the most committed environmentalist I have ever met in my life,” he said. “He does not own a vehicle, and he counts every footstep he makes on the planet.”
Joining them as a co-founder was Karen van Vuuren, who no longer has a stake in the business but remains a green funeral advocate.
“I brought a certain business sense having created a couple of businesses that had been pretty successful – and I had this drive to build something that did not exist yet,” Viddal said. “They had the skills, heart and experience … we matched perfectly.”
About two years ago, Mike Reagan joined the team as CEO, who Viddal met while at a seminar for hospice volunteers.
“Over the course of nine days, we got to talking … he had just retired after a 31-year career in technology, most recently having helped grow a cybersecurity company from under $1 million in revenue to over $200 million as chief marketing officer over about a 10-year period. He left that career to become a hospice volunteer, where he found his passion.”
After buying out van Vuuren’s stake in the company, Viddal reached out to Reagan to serve as a consultant, as he was unsure of what direction to move in.
“He started coaching me, and after about six months, I asked if he would like to put his cleats back on and get back in the game, and to my surprise, he had fallen in love with the funeral side of things,” Viddal said. “I also learned that he was a gravedigger for his local funeral home when he was in high school, and in college, he was an apprentice embalmer. So, he’d already had done about seven years of funeral work but had worked in technology his whole career. I hired him to be the CEO of The Natural Funeral and shifted my role to being the COO.”
After Reagan joined the team, the company raised a small amount of money from a few angel investors, but Viddal remains the majority equity partner.
Perfecting the Process – and Becoming a National Partner
The Natural Funeral’s first terramation vessel was rudimentary — a slow, six-month process that took patience and faith.
“That first family taught us so much,” Viddal said. “The mother said, ‘It takes nine months to bring a child into the world. If it takes that long to return one to the earth, I’m at peace with that.’”
Today, The Natural Funeral is using its fourth generation of terramation vessels — called Chrysalis™ units — featuring motorized rotation, controlled moisture and automated monitoring for temperature and oxygen. The process now takes roughly 30 to 33 days, followed by a curing period of 30 days, immediately following time in Chrysalis™.
A Hard-Won Fight
While Viddal and his co-founders moved with purpose and vision, success did not happen overnight.
In fact, in its first year in business, The Natural Funeral served only 45 families, Viddal said.
“We didn’t know much about marketing, and we did not have a pipeline of preneed clients, so we started off slow,” he said.
This year, however, the firm is on track to serve about 260 families, with about 39% opting for water cremation and the remainder being pretty evenly split between terramation (also called natural organic reduction), flame cremation (which it contracts out to a third party) and green burial.
Residents from about 20 states, including many where terramation is not legal, have sought out The Natural Funeral for its terramation services, including a family whose loved one died while traveling in Indonesia, Viddal said.
The funeral home also provides terramation to area funeral homes as a third party, with Viddal noting that he’s garnered tremendous support from unexpected partners, including a Jewish mortuary in the Denver area.
“We have been amazed that their clientele has been so receptive,” he said. “We offer a terramation wholesale rate of $5,000, and they set their retail price point,” he said.
With its TerraCare Partner Program, The Natural Funeral designs and installs complete terramation vessel networks — modular setups that include Chrysalis™ vessels, curing bins, sifting systems and site preparation and training. The starting configuration, typically four vessels and ancillary equipment, costs around $350,000 installed. A proprietary blend of organic materials — the “composting tea” that initiates the process — is shipped directly from Colorado for each use.
Each terramation carries a $2,000 operational fee, covering supplies, maintenance, and ongoing technical support. The Natural Funeral also offers marketing materials, staff training and consultation on language and family engagement. It’s focusing on working with firms that expect to carry out 48 terramation cycles per year.
Each Chrysalis™ vessel can carry out one terramation per month, so 48 cycles require four vessels, Viddal said. The Natural Funeral also provides ancillary equipment to carry out the process, such as curing bins.
“We do a site survey and will specify where your electrical plugs need to be,” he said. “You also need roof penetration for exhaust to go out. We build the vessels, we do the installation and we provide training on terminology and operations.”
The language, he said, is so important.
“We present it as ‘terramation’ or the gentle transformation of a body – we don’t like the term ‘composting,’” he said. “We coach funeral homes on that – and on safety considerations. Then, we present the funeral home with literature and share what has worked for us, and then we hand them the keys to the car. Our goal is to work in partnership with them, so they are the go-to providers.”
While some funeral homes may balk at the $350,000 price tag and $2,000 per case charge, consider what The Natural Funeral charges for terramation: $9,200.
“That is where we recommend people start at,” Viddal said. “We know that there are some operators that offer it for less, but we have been able to demand that price point, and this is our fastest-growing mode of disposition. We charge $4,400 for water cremation, which is the same price we charge for flame cremation. So, this is more than twice as much as our other options.”
Viddal credits terramation with boosting his funeral home’s preneed program. In fact, his phone rings at least four times more than before, and the preneed conversion rate has more than doubled, he said.
“It brings something magnetic to the funeral home that we feel is of great value,” Viddal said.
The Chrysalis™ Difference
Unlike traditional cremation, terramation creates a tangible return to the earth. Each process yields approximately 20 cubic feet of nutrient-rich soil, and families can choose how to use or distribute it — from planting memorial gardens to donating the soil to regenerative agriculture projects.
The Natural Funeral’s approach stands apart for its technical precision and respect for ritual. The Chrysalis™ vessels are designed to be beautiful and approachable, allowing families to participate in a “laying-in” ceremony that feels both natural and sacred.
For funeral homes considering adoption, Viddal emphasizes that the process is meant to complement — not compete with — existing services. “We work in partnership,” he said. “You set your own pricing and maintain your relationship with the family. We just make sure you have the tools and expertise to do it right.”
Overcoming Misconceptions
Colorado’s funeral industry has weathered serious challenges in recent years, including high-profile cases of mishandled remains.
One such case involved the Return to Nature Funeral Home, in which scores of bodies were mishandled.
“The couple that owned the funeral home lied to families, falsified paperwork, and gave back cement and concrete powder in the guise of cremated remains,” Viddal explained. “They were not practicing anything environmentally friendly, but because of the association with natural funerals, we took a hit.”
Seemingly overnight, in the weeks and months after the scandal broke, The Natural Funeral lost about 75% of its clientele, Viddal said.
“We’ve had to claw our way to get back to having our name not be associated with that,” he said. “We put out press releases and some amazing local journalists wrote articles that said, ‘Yes, there is some scandal in the industry, but not these folks in Lafayette, who are doing good work.’ But still, it was devastating to our business.”
That experience has only reinforced the company’s commitment to ethical, transparent practices — and to helping other funeral homes avoid similar pitfalls as they adopt new technologies.
A Growing Movement
With contracts already in place for installations in 2026, The Natural Funeral is quickly becoming a national resource for sustainable funeral innovation.
“If you are not particularly great with soil transformation, mechanical engineering and fluid distribution, but you can envision setting this up and believe families would connect to it – but you just don’t know how to do it – we can fabricate those terramation units,” Viddal said. “We have done over 200 of these processes, so I can tell the funeral home operator that you can speak to a family with a certain level of assurance and tell them that this process will break down the body in 45 days or so, and what it will produce will be recognizable as soil. The family has to decide what to do with it.”
He emphasizes that the environmental impact is significant: Each terramation offsets roughly two flame cremations and sequesters over 1,000 pounds of carbon. Families are drawn to that message.
The Next Chapter
For Viddal, expanding the services provided by The Natural Funeral means more than evolving as a business — it’s a continuation of the deeply personal journey that brought him into funeral service in the first place.
“This is how I honor my father and my little brother,” he said. “They both loved the natural world. This work gives their voices a way to keep speaking — and it gives other funeral directors a way to help families do the same.”
As The Natural Funeral transitions from provider to partner, its mission remains rooted in compassion, transparency and environmental stewardship — helping funeral homes everywhere bring families closer to the earth, and to each other, at the end of life.
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