Mortuaries in England would like to offer a new service for the final disposition of the remains of the dead: a liquid nitrogen freeze-drying process called “promession” that is more environmentally friendly than traditional cremation. The process is in use in Sweden, but hasn’t yet been legalized in the U.K. The issue of body disposal is a bit more pressing in Britain than in the U.S. because of the relative scarcity of usable land for burials.
The notion of “green funerals” isn’t yet a widespread idea, but is gaining interest in some circles. The standard American funeral industry version of embalming the dead with nasty chemicals, sticking them in a non-degradable coffin made from assorted metals and synthetics, then burying it all in a concrete-lined vault that prohibits the natural recycling of human remains back into the earth seems to me to be a particularly terrible way to deal with the inevitable end of a human body. You could predict with near 100% certainty what the response of the funeral industry spokesperson was going to be in that “green funeral” link because they aren’t happy about losing the tidy profits made from taking advantage of bereaving families in their hour of grief by overselling products. The rejoinder from the Jewish funeral director pretty much strikes all that down pretty easily — Jewish burial customs still eschew embalming and using anything other than a plain wooden coffin buried directly in the ground, and there are none of the bogus “public health” issues that the industry claims.
