Ashes to ashes, body to syrup
It’s a choice we all must make: coffin or urn, burial or cremation.
This is not an industrial washing machine.
Before making a rash decision, consider the new alternative of having yourself, or a loved one, liquefied into a “brown syrup” that can be flushed down a toilet.
The Daily Mail has a good report on the latest in funeral home technology, and says Florida is the seventh U.S. state to legalize “chemical cremation.”
The good folks at Anderson-McQueen funeral home in St. Petersburg were quick to purchase an ’alkaline hydrolysis’ unit from a UK-based company.
The $300,000 machine works by immersing a body in a solution of water and potassium hydroxide, which is then pressurised and heated to 356 degrees Fahrenheit for about three hours.
The result? A few pints of green-brown tinted liquid containing amino acids, peptides, sugars and salts and soft, porous white bone remains which are easily crushed, says the Daily Mail.
The crushed bone can be returned to next of kin as ashes; the syrupy mixture can be applied to a memorial garden or “simply put into the sewerage system,” which should boost the sale of water purifiers.
Resomation Ltd, manufacturer of the machine, claims the system reduces cremation greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent, and that mercury emissions – typically released from dental fillings when burned – are eliminated.
The process — dubbed “resomation” — is legal in Florida, Minnesota, Maryland, Oregon, Kansas, Colorado and Maine, according to ABC News.
Company founder Sandy Sullivan said: “Let’s face it – there’s no nice way to go.”
“If you stood in front of a cremation, with the flames and heat, it seems violent. You go next door and the resomation is quiet.”
“We’re using the exact same chemistry that’s carried out by bacteria but instead of happening over months and years, it happens in three hours.”
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51 comments Add your comment
Mahna Mahna
September 20th, 2011
11:50 pm
You’re already ‘drinking’ people when they recycle water. Us women have period and most of the time there is a fertilized egg (some seem to think that’s a person) and other times it’s a miscarriage. It would be nice if my corpse could feed some wild animal as intended.
ep tor
September 21st, 2011
2:48 am
Could you make one of those lava lamps with that syrop? I might look kool on the mantle. Maybe the wife will finally get off by back – I’ll be doing something useful around the house.
Grimmie
September 21st, 2011
2:57 am
What gets me is all of the people being kind of shocked about “the syrup” going into the water system. Where do you think all of the blood goes when a person is embalmed?…down the drain my friends!!!
Me
September 21st, 2011
10:29 am
At a cannibals house it would be please pass the granpa he is really good on pancakes or waffles!
Imunique
September 21st, 2011
12:23 pm
With a bit of tweaking this is something you probably could do at home. I’m visualizing late-night TV commercials for the Time-Life Home Chemical Cremation Kit.
Darrell
September 21st, 2011
1:04 pm
If it keeps the mercury and other metals that accumulate in an American over a lifetime from going into the environment, sounds good to me. Let’s face it, when you’re done with it, it is no longer a temple. Burn it, melt it, bury it, or throw it in the ditch. Melting seems better than some of the options.
Bubba
September 29th, 2011
6:52 pm
How about a plain pine box in a country church yard?
Louis
September 30th, 2011
7:01 am
Maybe a few individuals wouldn’t mind being sent into the sewer after they go, but I doubt that most would find it very dignified. And pouring your late Aunt Rita over the petunias as liquid fertilizer doesn’t really sound much better.
PeopleAreIdiots
October 3rd, 2011
5:49 pm
“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out…..” So people think this is disgusting as opposed to–what??? Are maggots and other decomposers that slowly feed on and liquefy your body in the ground more appealing? Do you like how cemeteries concentrate hundreds of buried bodies to decompose and leach into the water supply? What about the cremation process that boils and melts the flesh right off your body, burning bodies up a smoke stack–is that better? Do you like to breathe grandma? I am really disappointed in the author’s attempt to make the process sound so gruesome. It’s all pretty gross. Do people think there is a flusher on the unit that in any way resembles a toilet? And for those who think the material ends up directly in your potable drinking water….. do you drink your turds? And fertilizer chemicals? What about the untreated body fluids that go straight to the sewer, are you drinking those? Or do you think that perhaps materials sent to the wastewater TREATMENT plant are treated by physical, chemical, and biological means before being recycled to the environment? I see no environmental concerns with the process (only glowing benefits), and quite frankly I like having the choice. If it’s not for you, then choose another disposition option that better suits your wishes. (Am I the only one who had a good science curriculum in grade school?)
Homer
October 3rd, 2011
6:11 pm
mmmmmmm syrup……