PROMESSION / alternative technologies

In its infancy cremation was considered an ecological and sociological step up from the classic model of internment. The nature of the process is inherently carbon intensive but it is in its emissions where it has had difficulty keeping in line with increasingly stringent regulations. Efforts towards mercury abatement and general emission cleaning have vastly increased the cost of maintenance, making the construction of new sites to supply demand, unfeasible. This has forced the situation where committals are more expensive, impersonal, and unsympathetic, all in order to keep up with the demands of the public. Though expensive, the emissions cleaning techniques are successful where implemented, but have largely gone unnoticed by the general public, and while the cremation rate remains high, there has recently been a move toward more ‘ecological’ forms of internment – woodland burial, biodegradable coffins et al. However, these green burials fail to account for the ecological consequences of burying a dead body, increase its risks by encouraging internment in un-designated areas and ignores the spacing limitations by simply expanding it geographically and temporally.

SUSANNE WIIGH-MASAK / inventor of the promession process

An alternative process, that brings significant environmental improvements, has been developed by Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak. In this process the body is cryogenically frozen and gently vibrated rendering it into a freeze dried pink powder, at this stage metal can safely be extracted as larger solids. The powder is packaged in a biodegradable box and shallow buried where, over a matter of one or two years, all the minerals and nutrients are (re)absorbed into the earth. Truly it is ‘dust to dust’ and unlike grave burial (including woodland or ‘green burial’), where the remains typically decay in a very slow and mellifluous anaerobic manner. They suggest that a shrub or tree could be planted above the remains.

IMPATIENS WALLERIANA