What is Aquamation? That question leads the headline in recent news about the final arrangements requested by Bishop Desmond Tutu. For example:
The Washington Post 1/2/22: “What is aquamation, the burial practice Desmond Tutu requested instead of greenhouse gas-emitting cremation?”
The Guardian 1/2/22: What is aquamation? The process behind Desmond Tutu’s ‘green cremation’
The Sun 1/1/22: Rest in Peace. Desmond Tutu celebrated at funeral and given water cremation as green alternative
Aquamation uses water, chemicals, and heat to reduce a body to bones, which are then rinsed, dried and pulverized into ash-like remains. Compared to flame cremation, this process is more environmentally friendly, using less fuel, reducing air pollution, and avoiding release of toxic mercury from dental fillings.
This process, also called water cremation, bio-cremation, or alkaline hydrolysis, is accomplished in a pressurized vessel. There are companies in the U.S. and the U.K. that produce the aquamation equipment.
Is this process available here in Massachusetts? Not yet. In 2021 two Massachusetts legislators introduced a relevant bill, H4036: An Act Relative to Environmentally-Friendly Burial Alternatives, which would allow two new options – Natural Organic Reduction (human composting) and Alkaline Hydrolysis (water cremation or aquamation). Positive testimony was given November 15 during a virtual public hearing of the Joint Committee on Public Health, chaired by State Senator Jo Comerford. I hope that bill will move forward for approval.
In 2014, at a national FCA conference in Minnesota, I attended a presentation by Jason Bradshaw, a funeral director who has been providing aquamation since 2010. “We looked at bio cremation because families increasingly began asking for more environmentally suitable ways to dispose of the body of a person who has died. Essentially, bio cremation takes the natural process and accelerates it to two or three hours,” he explains.
