A Swedish town is preparing to become the first to adopt a radical new form of environmentally friendly funeral.
Freeze-dried burials will be offered as an option in the town of Jonkoping by 2007, local officials have said.
Invented by ecologists keen to connect funerals with the organic environment, the process sees bodies frozen in liquid nitrogen, then broken into dust.
The frozen remains can be buried in a shallow grave, where they decompose and nourish the earth within weeks.
Churches have backed the plan, describing the issues as ethically similar to those addressed when approving cremation about 100 years ago.
Jonkoping, a town of 120,000, lies in a religious area of protestant Sweden.
Nature's original plan was that we fall down somewhere in a field and become soil
Susanne Wiigh-Maesak
But Goran Rundqvist, head of the town's parks and graveyard division, said the scheme was enjoying broad support.
"People in the town here are very interested in this. People across the whole of Sweden are waiting to see this," he told the BBC News website.
"There are no problems with the church or with any of the people."
Recycling
Susanne Wiigh-Maesak, a Swedish biologist who has worked on the project for seven years, says the process is deeply rooted in respect for the dead and for the natural environment.
Susanne Wiigh-Maesak, a Swedish biologist who has worked on the project for seven years, says the process is deeply rooted in respect for the dead and for the natural environment.
"Nature is very skilled at breaking down organic material, and we really should learn from this," she told the BBC.
Under the process, billed by Ms Wiigh-Maesak as "ecological burial", bodies are dipped in a bath of freezing liquid nitrogen.
The brittle bodies are then mechanically shaken so that they begin to break down into small particles.
The process removes water from the body without destroying its biological identity, Ms Wiigh-Maesak said.
Freeze-dried remains buried just under the surface of the ground can return to the ecological cycle much quicker than those buried in deep graves and coffins.
Ms Wiigh-Maesak's company, Promessa Organic, recommends planting a tree above the grave, which can be nurtured as a living reminder of the deceased.
"Nature's original plan was that we fall down somewhere in a field and become soil," she said.
posted on September 29, 2005 05:17:48 PM new
What is the environmental impact of making, maintaining, and disposing of all that liquid nitrogen? You can't just keep a tub of it out in the open and dump it out when you're finished with it.
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Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum sonatur.
posted on September 29, 2005 05:38:25 PM new
From what I've read,there isn't much environmental impact. There is a danger if it is spilled, as what it does is to displace oxygen while the vapor cloud is present, so breathing equipment for workers would be necessary, and of course you don't want to touch it.
But it doesn't sound that, in this application, that huge quantities are needed. And I suppose that they'd be able to use the same liquid nitrogen over & over and just "top it off" again as it evaporates.
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"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -- George W. Bush
