In the last 15 years, the average Canadian’s estimated ecological footprint has nearly doubled from 4.3 to 7.6 hectares, the fourth-highest national average in the world in 2009. In part, this figure was based on annual carbon dioxide emissions of about 15.2 tonnes per person. The global average is less than 30 per cent of this figure.
Canadians are known as big energy users, in large part due to our lifestyle. But what many people often overlook is the energy that the average Canadian uses even in death.
More than half of Canadians now choose to be cremated when they die, up from just three per cent 50 years ago. In other countries, such as Japan, this number is as high as 99 per cent.
The amount of natural gas required to fuel the process of incineration is equivalent to driving a gasoline-powered car over 800 kilometres and the amount of electricity equals a single person’s energy expenditure for a month in an industrialized country.
A standard cremation releases about 400 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, along with other smog-causing pollutants like dioxins and mercury vapor from any silver fillings or pacemakers the deceased may have had.
People are increasingly searching for ways to make their final resting place a more environmentally friendly one, and a number of alternatives, from coffins made of recycled cardboard to using alternative embalming chemicals, are emerging to fill the niche.
One such development is a new process called alkaline hydrolysis. This is a new form of “bio-cremation,” or an ecologically friendly way to reduce human remains to bone ash. Commercially the term is called “resomation,” as it was developed by Sandy Sullivan, founder and director of Resomation Ltd.
In resomation, the body is placed in a silk bag within a metal cage frame and then loaded into a resomator. The machine is filled with a mixture of water and potassium hydroxide, and heated to 180 degrees Celsius at high pressure. The pressure prevents boiling and instead, the body (protein matter and soft body tissues) is dissolved into its chemical components. The process takes about two to three hours.
Afterwards, only soft and brittle, white, porous bones are left and a syrupy brown liquid (containing amino acids, peptides, sugars, and salts) that can be flushed down the drain or recycled back into the ecosystem such as in a garden or a forest. The bones of the deceased can be crushed into white ash and returned to the next of kin.
Alkaline hydrolysis is not a completely new process and was historically used in medical schools, animal labs, and other facilities to sterilize and dispose animal tissues. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota used the process since 2006 to dispose of human bodies donated for medical education.
This chemical process uses about one-tenth of the natural gas of fire-based cremation and one-third the electricity. Carbon dioxide emissions are cut by almost 90 per cent and no mercury escapes as fillings and other metal objects, such as hip or knee replacements, can be recovered intact and recycled.
The technology has expanded throughout the world and has recently reached North America. Transition Science, a company in Toronto, owns the exclusive rights to the process in Canada. It is targeting a commercial launch next spring.
As of fall 2009, Park Lawn Income Trust, which owns six cemeteries and four crematoriums in the GTA, has signed on to become the first Canadian user of the new system developed by Resomation. The new bio-cremation process will cost roughly the same as a standard cremation.
Responses to this new alternative to cremation (the first in over 100 years) have been mainly positive, although there has been some opposition by the Catholic Church, which historically preferred full-body burial and only accepted cremation as a burial practice since the 1960s.
