In Durban, South Africa, burial space has become so limited that according to the South African Press Association, funeral experts at the 2001 Funerex Conference in Durban suggested burying the deceased vertically to conserve space. In Athens, Greece burial space is at such a high premium that they must rent burial space. Once the lease is up, the remains are exhumed and place in a $55-per -year vault provided by the cemetery, according to the Baltimore Sun. In 1999, the BBC reported that London, England, faced such a burial space shortage that the city considered burying two or more caskets on top of one another in one plot.
The burial space quandary has contributed to the rising popularity of cremation, a process that frustrates many environmentalists because of the alleged potential of mercury from amalgam fillings polluting the atmosphere. According to the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, about 50 of the 69 crematories in Sweden do not meet today’s environmental requirements and must make major improvements in technology. In addition some religions staunchly oppose cremation, which leaves burial as the only option of disposition for some cultures. If a society cannot cremate a person due to religious beliefs and cannot bury that person because there is no more room, however, what options remain?
Twenty years ago, Susanne Wiigh-Masak a Swedish marine biologist, started brainstorming a different, more natural way to dispose of human remains. “I thought of the three ways a body can decompose: rotting, burning or mulching,” says Wiigh-Masak. “In Sweden, our priest say, ‘from soil you come, to soil you go.’ You have to imagine the first human beings on this planet. There were only a few and when they died, they fell where they stood. With the help of oxygen and other animals, their bodies eventually became soil-the mulching process. I wanted to mimic the mulching process in which the body naturally becomes compost, but I wanted to do it in a dignified way that the person isn’t decomposing in public.” Wiigh-Masak eventually developed a process called “promession,” which h involves freeze drying bodies and turning them into soil. With this idea, she founded the company Promessa Organi c AB, in Nosund, Sweden.
The Process
Rather than cremating bodies at high temperatures in a crematorium, this new process flash -freezes bodies to .18 degrees Celsius before immersing them in liquid nitrogen, where temperatures reach a chilling -196 degrees Celsius in a “promatorium.” When the bodies reach their frozen peak, they become very brittle. Once this happens, the bodies are broken down by the vibration of sound waves at a specific amplitude into a fine organic powder, which only takes 60 seconds at most. The powder is them warmed up to between 50 and 40 degrees Celsius and passed through a chamber where the remaining water is evaporated. Next any surgical parts or mercury that were in the person’s body are separated from the organic powder via a magnetic metal separator. Then the odorless powder which is now one-third of the original body weight is placed in a corn or potato starch casket and buried in a shallow grave (about 12 inches deep). In six months, the casket and its contents turn into “compost” that can be used to nourish a tree or any other foliage.
The Payoff
Promession appeals to those who believe life is cyclical and who wish to adopt a more natural approach to disposition, as well as cyclical and who wish to adopt a more natural approach to disposition, as well as cultures that frown upon cremation but fact a shortage of burial space. In order for this process to work as intended and gain acceptance at the same time, however Wiigh-Masak notes the necessity of three things: the remains need to be smaller and more water soluble, they must maintain their organic form for nutritional sake, and they must be unrecognizable as human remains for the sake of human acceptance. Promession is not only a way to conserve burial space, but Wiigh-Masak is also convinced that it will help balance earth’s ecosystem. “Our environment is like the economy,” she says. “If you take something out of the soil, you should be able to put something back; otherwise it will be an unbalanced situation. There are six-billion people in the world today and if everybody grows from the soil and gives nothing back, something is going to be very wrong.”
The Potential
Promession is still in its infancy. The town of Joenkoeping, 204 miles southwest of Stockholm, Sweden will soon begin operating the first freeze-drying facility. Promessa has since obtained patients for this process in 55 different countries, including some as far away as South Africa, and might expand to Scandinavia, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands next. Moreover, the demand for promession has already taken hold in other countries. Wiigh-Masak noted that she was contacted by a funeral entrepreneur in Switzerland who asked if they could ship bodies to Sweden for promession since the process is not yet available in his country. Wiigh-Masak has also started the Promessa Foundation, to which she will donate the patient. If this process garners more money, she says “it can be used to create a better world.” While this form of disposition has not yet crossed the pond to the United States, it might offer a new option for U.S. consumers in the future.
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