For anyone uneasy at the thought of their body being consumed by flames or interred in an insect-teeming grave, a new funeral choice is about to become available: water cremation.
The process of dissolving a body in a bag in 160C water treated with an alkali will become available in the UK from this week – the first new legal method of disposing of cadavers since the Cremation Act of 1902. It has been described as a “boil in the bag” funeral.
The practice is legal in the majority of US states, Canada and South Africa, where it was chosen for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died last year. It is also legal in the UK, but has only been used only in limited trials aimed at testing if the resulting solution was safe to release into the drainage system.
With a carbon footprint that is claimed to be about half of that of gas-fired cremation, the process leaves only bones, which are then powdered and returned to the family in the same way as cremated ash.
Advocates describe it as “gentler on the body and kinder on the environment” and Co-op Funeralcare, the UK’s largest undertaker, will start offering it in the north-east of England, where a former coffin maker, Julian Atkinson, has set up the required equipment.
Northumbrian Water has granted approval for the resulting water to be sent back into the drainage network as “trade effluent”, the same permit used by launderettes.
“We are satisfied the disposal will have no impact on our wastewater treatment processes,” the water company said.
Polling has found that almost no one among the British public has heard of the practice, but once explained to them, just under a third (29%) said they would choose the method – also known as resomation, aquamation, or alkaline hydrolysis – for their own funeral if it was available.
“By starting to make resomation available in the UK, Co-op will be providing people with another option for how they leave this world because this natural process uses water, not fire, making it gentler on the body and kinder on the environment,” said Atkinson. “We are encouraged to see that many members of the public are conscious of reducing the carbon footprint, even after death.”
A typical cremation releases 245kg of carbon, creating a UK annual impact of 115,150 tonnes, according to the CDS group, a crematorium consultancy. That is equivalent to electricity to power 65,000 households.
Funerals would take place as normal with the body in a coffin but for the water cremation it would be wrapped in a woollen shroud and placed in a “bio pouch” made from cornstarch. This would then be placed in a sealed chamber with 95% water and the remainder potassium hydroxide and heated to about 160C. After four hours everything but the skeleton would be dissolved.
After testing in 2020, Yorkshire Water granted consent for the solution to be discharged into the usual drainage system after analysis found there was no risk and no DNA was found in samples. The solution is modified to balance its PH before it is discharged “in time returning to the natural water cycle”, the Co-op said.
“The UK has a history of innovation when it comes to compassionately, practically and hygienically managing the disposal of bodies after death,” said Prof Douglas Davies at the department of theology and religion at Durham University. “Cremation grew in popularity throughout the 20th century and overtook burial in the 1960s as the preferred method of disposal for people.”
The new practice cropped up in the 2019 Russell T Davies BBC TV miniseries Years and Years, which featured a scene in an ”aquatorium”.
“Boil in the bag. Like sous-vide,” explains one mourner to another. “You get flushed. Down the drain. Out to sea. The end.”
