Go green: An eco-friendly funeral?

You could think of it as your last chance to reduce your carbon footprint, an eco-friendly funeral.

Each cremation produces around 150 kilograms of CO2. Cremations also produce toxic chemicals - a cubic metre of the exhaust gases can contain as much as 200 micrograms of mercury, largely from dental fillings.

Now, a range of cleaner and greener ways to dispose of the deceased will soon be made available, from dissolving a corpse in chemicals to freeze-drying it to a powder, the ‘New Scientist’ reported.

A company called, Resomation, based in Glasgow has developed a technique to dispose of a corpse by dissolving it in sodium hydroxide at 180 degree celcius.

A gas-fired steam boiler generates the heat required, and the procedure produces 66 kilograms of CO2 per body, said Sandy Sullivan, the company’s founder. The process has been approved for use in five US States, but not yet in the UK.

Freeze-drying bodies could reduce emissions even further, according to another company, Cryomation, based in Woodbridge, UK. Its technique freezes a body to -195 degree celcius using liquid nitrogen. Once brittle, the frozen body is turned into a powder and any metal removed.

The remains are then dried in a vacuum and sterilised, said Richard Maclean of Cryomation. The powder can be buried in a biodegradable box or scattered as fertiliser. The process produces 50 kilograms of CO2 per body.

Cryomation, which developed the technology with a team led by David Naseby at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK, has already tested a prototype device on pig carcasses. A full-size prototype Cryomator is being built for trials later this year on human corpses.

Ian Hanson at Bournemouth University in the UK, a forensic archaeologist, points out that burying freeze-dried remains still uses up land. “Space would not be an issue if the powder was put to use, but is our society ready for our mortal remains to be utilised as fertiliser, or harrowed into crop fields?”