Decisions for The End Of Life

By Ian Sutton

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The Environmental Impact of Flame Cremation and the Promise of Alkaline Hydrolysis

Windsor, N.L., offers aquamation as an alternative to cremation. The alkaline hydrolysis method uses water instead of flame.

By Ian Sutton

Last year, 10,738 residents of Nova Scotia died. Of those, 84.4 per cent, or 9,062, were cremated — the highest rate in the country.

Each flame cremation represents the equivalent of filling an SUV tank twice, emitting 242 kilograms of carbon dioxide. That amounts to 2,193,004 kilograms of CO2 that the remaining 1.06 million Nova Scotians have to breathe.

By next year, the percentage of cremations in Nova Scotia is projected to escalate to between 86 and 89.5 per cent, and then to 92.3 per cent by 2040.

The aging of its population means thousands more residents of the province will be reaching the ends of their lives within the next 16 years. Statistics Canada has forecast that by 2048, the annual number of deaths in Nova Scotia will range from 14,000 to 16,000. If 92 per cent of those are cremated, CO2 emissions will reach as high as 3,562,240 kilograms a year.

And that’s just one of several pollutants that could be completely avoided.

Saskatchewan, Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador, plus the Northwest Territories, have shown the foresight to make available to their residents a process called alkaline hydrolysis, also known as aquamation or water cremation or bio-cremation or several other less scientific terms.

The British Columbia government three years ago received a petition, now carrying 3,317 signatures, requesting the province to revise its legislation governing burials and cremations to make the method available. There’s been no response to date.

Meanwhile, Manitoba, Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have also been dragging their feet, some suggest, out of sheer ignorance.

Contacted about the alternative method being legalized in Nova Scotia, ministry staff say there’s no authority in present legislation allowing for the new method. Legislative amendments would be required, they say, and funeral homes would need the equipment and “processes would have to be in place to ensure the process is carried out in a way that meets consumer protection requirements.” But, they added, “we are always looking for ways to modernize legislation.”

However, the subject has already been studied to death.

Those five provinces, plus B.C., reported total mortality numbers in 2023 of more than 108,000. The percentage of Nova Scotia cremations was the highest in the country. The Canadian average was 74.5 per cent. Multiplying that by the same 242 kg factor amounts to over 26 million kg of CO2 emissions in one year.

Those provincial governments might better study the impact of flame cremation on their environments than spend more tax-funded dollars on studying the already proven efficacy of alkaline hydrolysis. The Cremation Association of North America 14 years ago declared the method simply another form of cremation.

For those uncertain what it is, the technology was developed in 1888 by an Englishman to dispose of livestock bodies. The process was adapted for disposition of human remains in 1993 by doctors at Albany Medical College in New York. The process gained gradual acceptance since the early 2000s and has been legalized in 31 American states, a better track record than in supposedly more progressive Canada.

The method accelerates the natural decomposition process by immersing the body in a solution of 95 per cent water and five per cent alkaline (potassium or sodium hydroxide). There are two variations of the technology, one in which the water is heated under pressure to prevent boiling. The process takes between two and 16 hours, depending on the type of machine used. Once completed, the effluent is discharged into wastewater systems as a form of peptide soap.

All that remains are bones, lighter in colour from those from flame cremation, which are dried and pulverized before being given to the family. It produces 20-30 per cent more ash because the body is not subjected to the high heat of flame cremation.

Alkaline hydrolysis is regarded as a gentler way of departure. But the big bonus is it causes negligible environmental harm.

Environmentalists love the idea. Interest in aquamation grew significantly when environmental champion, anti-Apartheid crusader and Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa arranged for aquamation to be used before his 2021 death.

CO2 emissions from flame cremation aren’t the only pollutants. Burning bodies produces toxic mercury from tooth fillings, metal vapours from surgical implants and releases of hydrogen fluoride, nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, particulate matter and heavy metals.

Some powerful groups have fought to stop the use of aquamation, some from the death-care industry itself. But enlightened funeral directors are contemplating the new method, at least one of them in Nova Scotia.

Some predict it will replace flame cremation within a few years. The cost to consumers — $1,600 to $2,500 — is slightly more than flame cremation, but it will be more affordable once it gains wider acceptance.

Meanwhile, one recent forecast is for Nova Scotia’s population to increase from just under 1.07 million to close to 1.1 million by 2043. Mortality projections for the next several decades — in the billions globally — will become a huge problem everywhere due to the demographics of aging populations. Combine that with the impact of global warming, wildfires, flooding and other climate extremes and potential new epidemics.

"We have no sense of what's coming," planning professor Carlton Basmajian of Iowa State University told me.

“Like a lot of questions, it's going to take a crisis or catastrophe before people start paying attention. We’ve four decades of deaths coming, a lot more than we've had at any point in history."

What will it take to persuade at least these six provincial governments — Nova Scotia the most urgently among them — to take this matter seriously?

Ian Sutton has been a reporter for 56 years. He is author of two books on alternative methods of human body disposition. His latest, Pardon Our Dust: Decisions for the End of Life, was released in July. He lives in Carleton.

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