Abstract
In an age where concern for the environment is paramount, individuals are continuously looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint—does this now extend to in one’s own death? How can one reduce the environmental impact of their own death? This paper considers various methods of disposing the human body after death, with a particular focus on the environmental impact that the different disposal techniques have. The practices of ‘traditional’ burial, cremation, ‘natural’ burial, and ‘resomation’ will be discussed, with focus on the prospective introduction of the funerary innovation of the alkaline hydrolysis of human corpses, trademarked as ‘Resomation’, in the United Kingdom. The paper situates this process within the history of innovative corpse disposal in the UK in order to consider how this innovation may function within the UK funeral industry in the future, with reference made to possible religious perspectives on the process.
Highlights
This paper explores how this can extend to in an individual’s death, and how sustainability in death could be achieved through the process of ‘resomation’—the alkaline hydrolysis of human corpses
With natural burial, ‘we find ourselves at the cultural interface between cremation, as a late nineteenth-century technological innovation, twentieth-century popular appropriation, and the even longer-term British ideal of nature, gardens, parkland, and nature at large, albeit with the latter cultural motif being further intensified by the newer issues of ecology and world survival.’ (Davies 2015, p. 351)
We live in an age with an ever-increasing global population, where we pay for plastic bags, single-use-plastics are on the way to being banned, and concerns over climate change are more compelling than ever before; with all this considered, the introduction of resomation in the UK could be the piece towards solving the puzzle
Summary
We live in an age that has been manifested with ever-increasing concerns regarding the sustainability of human life on the planet. This paper will discuss the innovation of the alkaline hydrolysis of human corpses (‘resomation’), the history of corpse disposal in the UK, possible religious perspectives on the ‘resomation’ process, the environmental credentials of various disposal techniques, and why the opportunity for an additional choice at the end of life in the UK matters. There are three options available at the end of life in the UK: ‘traditional’ burial, ‘natural’ burial, and cremation.
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