The environmentally friendly way to go
A futuristic new form of burial, developed by an Adelaide funeral director, offers a “green” alternative to the traditional cremation, coffins and embalming.
Called cryomation, it involves freeze drying a body to reduce it to a fine dust, and burial in a small biodegradable container.
While humans will have to wait until around 2015 for the space-age send-off, the family pet may be able to switch from backyard burial to cryomation within three years.
The process was developed by White Knight funeral director Kevin Hartley, when he began experimenting with rats about two years ago.
Cryomation works by freezing the body to minus 30C in a commercial freezer, then placing it in a specially built cryomatic chamber which further freezes it to minus 50C.
All the air is sucked out of the chamber, drawing out the frozen liquids in the body as gas.
Once the body is dry, it is subjected to tiny microwaves which make it brittle and break it down into a fine dust.
The remains can then be buried in a biodegradable container, much smaller than a coffin, under a tree instead of a headstone.
Mr Hartley said cryomation eliminated the odours and pollution produced by burning coffins and plastics in cremation and used no chemicals, unlike embalming.
At a cost of about $800 to $900, the procedure would be similar in price to cremation.
When his time comes, Mr Hartley said he would like to be cryomated.
“I want my remains that are here to go back into nature,” he said.
“I have a vision of a new kind of eco-cemetery full of trees.
“I think there’s something beautiful in that.”
Mr Hartley said the move to cryomation was “inevitable” and it could one day render coffins and hearses redundant.
“People will want this, they will see it as a viable option,” he said.
“It’s a matter now of building more commercial prototypes.”
The idea was sparked after Mr Hartley heard about Swedish research into freezing bodies in liquid nitrogen.
“That doesn’t work,” he said.
“What I’ve done is take existing technologies and apply them.
“It is a significant change for the industry, it’s incredibly exciting.”