Culture and Society
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Memento mori tells us it’s good to remember that one day we will die. It gives you a kind of agency to live life on your terms, agency that can extend to choosing how you go out when the time comes.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Human funerary practices have come a long way, but until recently your main options were either burial or cremation using gas and/or fire. Now, green alternatives like water cremation are becoming more popular, and Scotland just became the first country in the United Kingdom to allow this sustainable funerary alternative. So, what is it?
What is water cremation?
Water cremation – also known as aquamation, biocremation, resomation, or flameless cremation – uses alkaline hydrolysis to dispose of human or animal remains. Touted as an eco-friendly alternative to cremation, it uses a heated alkaline solution to break down the body, leaving behind only the skeleton.
During aquamation, the body is placed inside a pressurized vessel filled with a mixture of water and potassium hydroxide (lye) and heated to around 90-150°C (200-300°F). As the container is pressurized, the solution doesn’t boil and instead gently gets to work breaking down the organic matter over several hours.
What remains?
Water cremation doesn’t break down the entire body. As in gas cremation, the skeleton endures and this is ground down into “cremains” that loved ones can then scatter or keep in an urn. The only noticeable difference here is that traditional cremains are gray in color, whereas water cremains are white. There are also typically more cremains left behind following water cremation.
Water cremation also doesn’t require items like pacemakers to be removed before a person’s body is processed. According to the National Law School of India University, another benefit is that mercury from dental treatments is contained and recycled rather than being burned up.
A greener solution
Traditional cremation requires immense energy to fuel enough fire to break down a human body. In the process, it pumps out millions of tons of carbon dioxide annually, including the pollutants PM10 and PM2.5. Both come with their downsides, with PM10 linked to depression and suicide, while PM2.5 has been associated with poorer heart and lung health, plus chronic illness and birth complications.
Aquamation requires roughly one-seventh of the energy used in cremation, and produces none of the emissions. It's estimated it could curb the associated carbon footprint by 75 percent, and the liquid left behind is a sterile mix of organic compounds. This includes salts and amino acids that can either be used as a fertilizer or neutralized and safely released into waterways.
Sounds pretty good, right? And yet water cremations aren’t yet a widely available option. But as the world becomes more eco-conscious in the face of our planet’s rapidly changing climate, it may become an appealing alternative for many (it was for Desmond Tutu).
Scotland leads the charge for the UK in becoming the first country to legally allow it. So, would you want water cremations available in your home country?
