Two new eco-friendly end-of-life options are coming to a funeral home near you. A Glasgow-based company has installed its first commercial “alkaline hydrolysis” unit at a Florida funeral home. It works by dissolving the body in heated alkaline water in under three hours. The process of “resomation” produces a third less greenhouse gas than cremation, uses a seventh of the energy, and allows for the complete separation of dental amalgam for safe disposal.
In Sweden, a biologist has developed a technology called “promession” which treats the dead body with liquid nitrogen, then breaks the frozen body into fragments, and the remains are poured into a small, square biodegradable coffin for shallow burial. She got the idea from composting, she said.
I am completely stopped by the image of my body frozen ala dippin’ dots style and the special way(s) that it could be broken down into small fragments. Maybe a lottery along the lines of those fund raisers that sell tickets to take a hammer to a beat-up junker car.