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.”