Lucky Last Word on The Greenest Way to Go

The world’s first water cremation centre on the Gold Coast is offering a liquid alternative to cremation and burial, using a process it hopes will revolutionise the funeral industry.

Aquamation Industries chief executive John Humphries says the service, at the Eco Memorial Park at Stapylton, appropriately near Dreamworld, is the first of its kind in the world.

“Aquamation is a more natural, ethical and environmentally friendly alternative to cremations and uses water instead of fire to return a body to nature, Mr Humphries said.

This has been reported  in New Scientist and around the world, even in Queensland by Courier Mail.

In his book “The ABC of Carbon”, Ken Hickson drew attention to various ways to green up the end of life as we know it, from eco friendly coffins to eternal reefs. There’s even advice on how to turn ash  into diamonds. Have a look at Funeral Rights and Funerals Recycled.  Read More

Wendy Zukerman in New Scientist (19 August 2010):

Want to leave a light footprint on this Earth when you die? Perhaps you should consider “aquamation”, a new eco-alternative to burial and cremation.

With land for burials in short supply and cremation producing around 150 kilograms of carbon dioxide per body – and as much as 200 micrograms of toxic mercury – aquamation is being touted as the greenest method for disposing of your mortal remains.

The corpse is placed into a steel container and potassium is added, followed by water heated to 93 °C. The flesh and organs are completely decomposed in 4 hours, leaving bones as the only solid remains.

This is similar to what’s left after cremation, where the “ashes” are in fact bones hardened in the furnace and then crushed.

Low-energy funeral

Aquamation uses only 10 per cent of the energy of a conventional cremation and releases no toxic emissions, says John Humphries, chief executive of Aquamation Industries in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, who developed the technology. The decomposition process, called alkaline hydrolysis, “simply speeds up the natural way that flesh decomposes in soil and water”, he says.

Similar methods for decomposing corpses have been developed elsewhere, but they decompose corpses at much higher temperatures. For example,Resomation, based in Glasgow, UK, dissolves bodies in sodium hydroxide at 180 °C.

By decomposing pig carcasses at different water temperatures, Humphries found that the higher heat was unnecessary and that 93 °C was the most efficient temperature for body decomposition.

Life from death

There are recycling possibilities too. Humphries says that aquamation, unlike cremation, will not destroy artificial implants such as hip replacements, allowing them to be reused. And after the body is decomposed, “the water is a fantastic fertiliser”, he says.

Since his company began offering the process last month, 60 people in Australia have nominated aquamation for the disposal of their own corpse.

“This is a great initiative,” says Barry Brook, a climate scientist at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. “It’s easy to dismiss these small-scale technologies as trivial, but if you add enough small-scale solutions together they can add up to something meaningful.”

Source: www.newscientist.com

AAP reports in Courier Mail (12 August 2010):

The world’s first water cremation centre on the Gold Coast is offering a liquid alternative to cremation and burial, using a process it hopes will revolutionise the funeral industry.

Aquamation Industries chief executive John Humphries says the service, at the Eco Memorial Park at Stapylton near Dreamworld, is the first of its kind in the world.

But he expects around 30 centres around Australia will offer the option within 12 months.

“Aquamation is a more natural, ethical and environmentally friendly alternative to cremations and uses water instead of fire to return a body to nature, Mr Humphries said.

“And within a year we would expect you would be able to have this done anywhere in Australia.”

The process, called alkaline hydrolysis, relies on the same natural forces by which which a dead animal is returned to nature in the bush, he said.

“So we’ve put this totally natural process into a stainless steel tube where the body is washed for about four hours; it’s the same natural breakdown of tissue, just at a faster rate, and even the Catholic church has now approved it,” he said.

Mr Humphries said the equipment he invented was based on an experimental unit in the US that uses extreme pressure and temperature to destroy the infectious remains of cattle with mad cow disease.

“We haven’t invented the process, nature discovered that,” he said.

“We’ve simply re-designed the equipment so the water breaks down the cells and brings the body back to the chemical component it’s made up of, leaving only white chalky bones which are returned to the family in an urn, like ashes.”

Aquamation costs about the same as cremation, but without the 200kg of greenhouse gas emissions produced in a cremation, he said.

“It’s expected that in America, within about 10 years, there won’t be cremations because the public reaction to this process is just overwhelming,” Mr Humphries said.

He said the technology was also an answer to new European regulations that state mercury pollution has to be reduced at crematoriums by 2012.
 

Source: www.couriermail.com.au