What is aquamation? Know all about the 'green alternative' to cremation chosen by South Africa's Desmond Tutu

 

The body of Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu was reduced to dust by aquamation, a new cremation method using water that funerary parlours are touting as environmentally friendly.

Family members gathered to say their goodbyes to anti-apartheid hero Desmond Tutu at a private service at St George's Cathedral on Sunday, where his ashes were interred in Cape Town and laid to rest.

Aquamation, or alkaline hydrolysis, consists of cremation by water rather than fire.

As per the process, the deceased's body is immersed for three to four hours in a mixture of water and a strong alkali like potassium hydroxide in a pressurised metal cylinder and heated to around 150 degrees Celsius. Through the process, the entire body is liquified, except for the bones. The bones are dried in an oven and then reduced to dust.

United States-based researcher Philip Olson has been quoted as saying that the method was developed in the early 1990s as a way to discard the bodies of animals used in experiments. According to Olson's 2014 paper, the US medical schools then adapted the process in the 2000s to dispose of donated human cadavers.

The introduction of aquamation to South Africa was introduced in 2019, reported Business Insider SA.

Benefits of aquamation

Resomation, a British manufacturer of machinery used in water cremation, estimates that substituting aquamation for fire-based cremation cuts a funeral’s greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent. Bio-Response Solutions, an Indiana-based manufacturer, estimates that its technology cuts energy use by 90 percent compared with cremation by flame.

 Is aquamation legal everywhere?

Aquamation isn’t a common household term and isn't even legalised everywhere. As of date, South Africa has no legislation specifically covering aquamation.

About 20 states in the United States have legalised the process, most over the past decade

Significant for Desmond Tutu

It is learnt that Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who passed away on 26 December, had requested that his funeral not be ostentatious and that his body not be cremated by flame. Instead, Tutu reportedly requested aquamation.

It is not surprising as the anti-apartheid hero was a huge champion of the environment and spoke frequently of the perils of climate change, which he once called among the “greatest moral challenges of our time”.

He advocated for boycotts of oil and fossil fuel-producing firms and called for greater investment in clean energy and low-carbon products. He also sought to amplify the voices of young climate activists.

He gave many speeches and wrote many articles about the need to act to tackle the climate crisis.