This article is a preview from the Autumn 2017 edition of New Humanist.
In the back room at Woking crematorium one wall is lined with large metal doors. Through a window the size and shape of a tennis ball, a piece of skull burns. Beyond that a fragment of pelvic bone sparkles orange. Funerals are done for the day and the mourners have left so I’m being shown round by Lynn Griffiths, memorial adviser, and Phil Morley, who has worked here for 37 years.
The funeral industry is one founded on respect, routine and long-standing tradition. Everyone is either cremated or buried, and many of the customs around death date back to the Victorian era. But that could be about to change. In 2015 the UK had the biggest increase in the national death rate since the 1960s, and the Office for National Statistics projects that, over the long term, the number will continue to rise. From 2014 to 2024 there will be 5.8 million deaths but the decade after will see 6.2 million of us die. That’s a lot of corpses for a small island. Our growing population combined with new technology is leading the death sector towards transformation. Industry insiders are likening it to the late 1800s, when cremation was first introduced.
Sitting amongst picturesque lawns beside a lake, Woking chapel is peaceful and neat. Griffiths has the warmth and authority of someone who deals regularly with the bereaved and Morley understands every detail of how to keep the chapel and crematorium running smoothly. Woking was once the pinnacle of a revolution in death. It was here that the long campaign for cremation ended in 1885, when a Mrs Jeanette Pickersgill became the first person in the UK to officially have her body cremated.
The drive for cremation began in 1873 at a world fair in Vienna. Sir Henry Thompson, physician to Queen Victoria, was visiting the fair and came across an exhibit featuring glass cubes filled with bones and flesh. It was the work of an Italian professor of anatomical pathology called Ludovico Brunetti, and according to Thomas W. Laqueur’s 2016 book Work Of The Dead it also featured the first model of a modern cremation machine.
Thompson was impressed with Brunetti’s work. Back home, cemeteries were filling up and concerns about disease from dead bodies were rife. Thompson believed cremation “was becoming a necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger in relation to the area it occupied”. So he founded the Cremation Society of Great Britain and members signed a declaration:
We, the undersigned, disapprove the present custom of burying the dead, and we desire to substitute some mode which shall rapidly resolve the body into its component elements, by a process which cannot offend the living, and shall render the remains perfectly innocuous. Until some better method is devised we desire to adopt that usually known as cremation.
After legal hurdles and much campaigning, the society achieved its aim and Mrs Pickersgill was cremated. But has “some better method” now been devised?
Griffiths and Morley lead me to where the coffin sits during funerals – atop an intricately carved catafalque made from alabaster and brass – and talk me through their careful routine. Morley points out the button the celebrant presses when it’s time for the coffin to move and explains that his colleague then raises the door and uses ropes to pull the coffin through to the back room. He shows me an order of service for a funeral that day and the specialist software they use for music (it’s called Obitus – like Spotify but specifically for funerals).
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Cremation requires a large metal chamber to be heated to between 1400 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. A column of flames produced by gas burns the coffin, dries the body, burns the skin and hair, then burns the muscles and soft tissues and eventually calcifies the bones. Gases released during the process are discharged through an exhaust system, which also gets rid of any smell.
The process uses energy. The amount of CO2 emitted during a cremation varies but an average figure of 140kg is frequently cited, roughly the same as a five-hour car journey. Considering that from 2010 to 2014 there have been an average of 423,789 cremations per year, it’s not insignificant. Cremation also releases mercury into the atmosphere, though in the UK the level has been drastically reduced since the government mandated emission cuts.
Scientists and entrepreneurs have been investigating greener methods for disposing of bodies for years now, but it looks like they could be on the cusp of a breakthrough. The technology closest to fruition is one that uses water instead of fire to break down the body. Alkaline hydrolysis works by submerging the corpse in a solution of water and potassium hydroxide which is pressurised to 4.5 atmospheres and heated to 150°C for around one hour. The cadaver is broken down to a skeleton, and the bones are then pulverised. The whole process takes three to four hours and proponents claim it uses less energy than cremation, produces less CO2 and emits no mercury.
Sandy Sullivan, a Scottish biochemist who previously worked in the animal slaughter business, founded a company called Resomation Inc which manufactures alkaline hydrolysis machines. Three of Sandy’s machines are in operation, all of them in the United States. He says not only are his better for the environment, they’re also quieter than cremation. “If you’ve ever been in a crematorium and you stand in front of a crematory, it’s noisy, and burning is a fairly violent process.”
Another alternative being explored uses liquid nitrogen to essentially freeze-dry the body. A UK company called Incinerator Replacement Technology Ltd is testing a process they call Cryomation. Their method uses liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196 degrees to cause the body to become brittle, then uses pressure to fragment the corpse into smaller particles. This one is yet to be tested on humans but it has been tested on pigs (pigs are always used to test disposal methods; they have similar levels of hair, skin structure, body mass, and fat-to-muscle ratio). Paul Smith, Head of Development at Cryomation, is confident they’ll move to testing on human cadavers next year.
These alternatives to cremation are technically legal in the UK, as they’ve never been made illegal. The government hasn’t passed primary legislation that gives them the power to regulate, which means there is no regulation. Without that it’s unlikely the funeral sector will embrace the new methods. In Scotland, though, that is changing. The Burial and Cremation (Scotland) Act 2016, and a change to the law around death certification in 2015, means Scotland can regulate for new technologies. Sullivan says they’re ready to do so. He expects to see alkaline hydrolysis in Scotland very soon.
Burial is also on the cusp of transformation. Around 25 per cent of people choose burial, and based on that rate the Office for National Statistics projects 680,000 people will want to be buried from 2015 to 2020. But in 2013, a BBC survey of local authorities revealed that in 20 years half the cemeteries in the UK would be full.
People choose burial for many reasons; the main religious groups choosing it are Muslims, Orthodox Jews and many Catholics (although the Catholic Church is not opposed to cremation). To cater for those wanting burial, the funeral sector needs to either obtain more land or fit more bodies into existing cemeteries.
Tim Morris thinks we should reuse the graves we already have. The chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management is two years off retirement and has worked in the death sector almost his entire career. With a cockney accent and an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things funereal, Morris explains that reusing graves means digging up existing human remains, burying them deeper into the ground and putting another coffin on top. The City of London Cemetery has started doing it and others – such as Southwark Council – may follow suit. If a grave is over 75 years old letters are sent to the owner at the last known address, notices are put up at the cemetery and ads in local newspapers. If anyone comes forward they can retain the rights. If not the graves are given over to reuse. “I think probably out of 2,000 letters that went out you might get two replies.” He says the shortage is pushing up the cost of burial, and reuse makes better use of the land: “There’s a shortage of space for the living, let alone the dead.”
At the moment, only cemeteries run by London’s local authorities are legally allowed to do this. The law around burial is complex as different laws apply to different sites. Some burial grounds – including local authority grounds and, to a lesser extent, Church of England churchyards – must abide by detailed statutes. Other burial grounds were established by acts of Parliament and have less regulation. Private burial grounds – some religious ones, and private woodland and natural burial sites – are the least regulated.
In 2004, the government carried out a consultation into the provision and maintenance of burial grounds because of the growing shortage. They concluded that the sector did not need a new Burial Bill to cover all types of grounds, and could instead deal with the problem using existing legislation. But many, including Morris, believe the sector does need a new Bill, and are campaigning for it.
The Burial and Cremation (Scotland) Act 2016 paves the way for Scotland to reuse graves and Morris thinks the rest of the UK should follow suit: “We should have one piece of legislation for all operators – private, public, and religious.” The Church of England would still operate under canon law, Morris explains, but every other denomination of cemetery could come under one piece of legislation, along with local authorities and private companies.
In light of changes across the sector, the Wellcome Trust has funded a research group called the Corpse Project. Sophie Churchill is leading their investigation into the best ways of dealing with the body after death for people and the planet. She thinks there is dissatisfaction with how things are done, and new options should be explored. She’s interested in not only the least harmful ways to dispose of corpses, but also if they can be put to positive use.
The UK is a world leader in green burial, which involves un-embalmed corpses buried in clothing made of natural fibres in biodegradable coffins, usually in woodland. With a background in forestry, Churchill understands woodland and she thinks green burial needs to be looked at more closely: “It’s been around for quite a long time and I think it’s probably time to do a little bit more probing. We should look at the pros and cons of it and if it can be a sustainable option for a lot more people.”
Churchill also thinks there’s scope to go further. Human cadavers can provide 17 of the 18 elements needed for plant growth, so the Corpse Project is looking into whether burying bodies at a shallow level could be beneficial to plants and the animals that feed on them. “You could have animals graze on top and then you’ve got double land use,” says Churchill.
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Dealing with the dead is not a UK-only problem, of course. In the US, one company has developed a wearable suit that uses mushroom spores to help the body decompose. Another wants to construct a three-storey building with a core in which a pile of dead bodies wrapped in linen are placed with high-carbon materials, eventually decomposing to become soil. According to the BBC, the Israeli government has approved the building of multi-storey underground burial tunnels. In Singapore one private company stores 50,000 urns that owners can retrieve automatically with an electronic card.
It strikes me that not everyone would be keen to try these new methods. What happens to our bodies after we die is a deeply personal decision. But it is also an issue for society and government. It matters how we deal with corpse disposal. “There’s been other priorities for politicians and scientists or anyone who might be tangentially interested in this area,” says Dr Kate Woodthorpe, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Bath. “But as the population ages and the death rate creeps up I think it will become more and more on people’s radars.”
Back at Woking, Morley shows me a cremulator, a small machine used for pulverising bones (the “ashes” we scatter aren’t really ashes, they’re pulverised bone). It works a little like a washing machine, spinning bone fragments round with metal balls until they’re ground down. Morley reaches into the machine and takes out a piece of metal. “It’s a hip replacement,” he says, and gently places it in a box of other metal joints that are to be recycled. Morley says he’ll be retiring soon, so he won’t be around to see what changes come next. “But the younger generation will. Things will definitely change.”
