Dissolve when you die, help the garden

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Uncomfortable with the thought of being buried or cremated when you die? You could always be dissolved.

At least one local crematorium is considering "alkaline hydrolysis" - or resomation - which dissolves bodies in heated alkaline water, as an alternative to cremation and burial.

Clifton Thomson, general manager of Purewa Cemetery, said he has spoken to its trust board on the possibility of offering it.

Glasgow-based firm Resomation which invented the process, installed its first resomator unit this year at a funeral home in St Petersburg. The process is legal in the American city.

In the system, bodies are submerged in a mixture of water and potassium hydroxide, which is pressurised and heated to 180C for about three hours.

It dissolves the body tissue and the resulting liquid is then poured into the water system, the company said.

And using the same machine as in the cremation process, bones are then removed from the unit and crushed into fragments.

"Just like cremation, the remains consist of bone ash," the Resomation website says.

"These are placed in an urn and returned to the loved ones."

Mr Thomson said: "There has been somewhat of an 'eek' from many studies due to the process of breaking down via [in] layman's terms 'boiling', and eventually leaving the bone shadows which are broken down and returned to families."

The process has environmental benefits. The units are said to use one seventh of the energy of cremation.

"One good opportunity for the water residue left over is to be used as a spray-on liquid fertiliser," said Mr Thomson.

"Otherwise it will just be flushed into the sewage system."