Death and postmortem logistics are often an uncomfortable topic few volunteer to approach, preferring mortality and the funerary industry in the back of the mind, quietly handled by those in the medical and death industries. While the bulk of the just energy transition processes call for a greater global governance that centers the accessibility of renewables to the communities most impacted and their use by the worst carbon offenders, popular flame cremation and other funerary practices cannot be excluded from shifts to sustainability. The Cremation Society of North America estimated that the cremation rate in the United States is around 59% and climbing – after all, traditional burials are expensive, and there is only so much room in America’s cemeteries. Canada’s cremation rates are higher, coming in at three-quarters of funerary conclusions in 2022. It does, after all, have its benefits – cremation can allow grieving loved ones more time to get their affairs in order in advance of a memorial ceremony, among other benefits of removing a decomposing body from the equation.

But according to the Green Burial Council, flame cremation creates “volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDDs/DFs), co-planar polychlorinated biphenyls (co-PCBs), and heavy metals.” Heavy metals often come from the burning of mercury fillings, contributing to atmospheric mercury pollution, but also from mercury naturally present in the body. The outputs of flame cremation total out to the equivalent of burning 400 million pounds of coal per year in the United States alone. The United Kingdom adds another roughly another 230 million pounds (103.4 million kilograms) with just under 72% expressing a preference for flame cremation in 2023. While the regular cleaning of effective filters can mitigate the introduction of some pollutants into the atmosphere with each cremation, the carbon emissions are unavoidable.

Meanwhile, even as burial involves putting the carbon into the ground rather than burned into the atmosphere, the environmental impact of traditional burial with all the bells and whistles carries with it a high cost of environmental impact. But popularized in the United States during the American Civil War as an effort to preserve frontline bodies on their way home for Christian funerals, embalming has been a central tenet of American funerary practice, touted as clean and hygienic. The concept of a family’s deceased loved one to remain preserved in what would appear to look like peaceful slumber became an easy comfort. But the formaldehyde present in embalming fluid can leak from coffins and leach into the ground, with as much as potentially 16 million liters polluting US soil every year. The cultural discomfort with decomposition has resulted in funerary practices aimed to avoid any exposure to it as a concept – be pumped with preservative fluids until eventual burial, or be reduced to bone dust to avoid the risk of the body undergoing visual decay. In an American funerary culture characterized by traditional Christian theology that the bodies of believers will walk again, for example, the concept of bodily decay is especially unsettling. But spending thousands on embalming and air-tight caskets, not to mention the sheer number of resources such as hardwood, copper, bronze, and steel going into the ground, certainly does not contribute to a collectively greener, sustainable future.

A Modern, Greener Option

Alkaline hydrolysis, also known as aquamation or resomation (named for Resomation LTD, a Scottish company pioneering water-based cremation as a carbon-friendly funerary alternative) , is a potential avenue for a greener mortality. Not only does the process consume the least amount of energy to obtain a similar effect to that of flame cremation, according to E.E. Keijzer and H.J.G. Kok’s 2011 study, but much of the energy costs are offset by the ability to recycle metals rather than put them in the ground or burn them into the atmosphere. In fact, resomation has been found to have net positive impacts on the environment in all cases except eutrophication, which can be mitigated by limiting the practice of scattering remains over land and into water.

Keijzer and Kok found that burials had the all-around highest environmental impacts, followed by cremation. The estimated costs of each funerary technique were quite telling – burial came in at an estimated environmental cost of 85 € per body (113.34 € when adjusted for inflation, then converted to $122.12 USD in 2024), followed by a little over €30 for cremation (40 € → $43.10), and 1.5 € euro for resomation (2 € → $2.12). Resomation’s costs broke down as 10 € for eutrophication management costs, followed by reductions of -7 € for negative human toxicity values and -1.5 € for mitigating climate change). That puts resomation at approximately 1.74% the collective environmental cost per body than that of burial and 4.92% that of cremation.

Unfortunately, alkaline hydrolysis is still expensive for the average mourner, coming in anywhere from $2,000-5,000 USD. The process is not nearly as commodified as cremation and burial, and the lack of accessibility poses a problem moving forward. The process is illegal in New Hampshire due to the influence of the Catholic Church in New Hampshire, and while legal in twenty-eight states, only thirteen actually have alkaline hydrolysis available as a funerary option. Meanwhile, much of the mainstream funerary industry is invested in upselling elaborate, embalmed burials by preying on the mourner(s) discomfort with decomposition, decay, and finality, including the myth that embalming is a legal requirement that will last forever. A shift to eco-friendly, no-frills funerary practices would cut into profits.

Funerals and Climate Finance 

Out of 3,464,231 registered resident deaths in the United States In 2021, almost 2 million Americans chose cremation – that comes out to around $86 million in environmental costs, plus the approximately $178 million in remaining burials. In the long run, can we afford these environmental management costs associated with traditional burial and cremation, especially as environmental damage and carbon emissions continue to unsustainably alter the climate in catastrophic and expensive ways?

The lack of climate financing in the death industry allows for the continuation of environmentally-damaging funerary practices that contribute to our warming world, as well as enable predatory funeral homes to upsell processes that pollute the planet. As concerns of financing just energy transitions around the world become more extreme and prevalent, any initiatives to pump less carbon and other pollutants into the air, leach fewer pollutants into our soil and water, and spend less on both a collective environmental and individual mourning basis per body processed, the closer we can get to a greener, more sustainable future for our one and only world. Alkaline hydrolysis contributes to the sustainability of our land, water, and air – the parts of our planet integral to survival that have been suffering in quality from carbon emissions and the resulting change to our climate. Financing alkaline hydrolysis as a primary funerary option, as well as supporting greener approaches to other funerary practices, necessitates transition-based funding for funeral homes. The vast majority of funeral homes are small, independent or family-owned businesses that may otherwise struggle to fund the equipment needed for water cremation and the end-of-life aspect of energy transition.

Sustainable funerals alone will far from pave the way to a global just energy transition, but climate financing cannot stop at the big-ticket items – with a 2024 average just under 167,000 deaths per day, the money needs to be there for the everyday, sustainably greener death, too.

Posted 14 May 2024.