Cremation? No, I will be liquefied & then flushed down drain
Council in bid to wash hands of corpses
A COUNCIL want to carry out “water cremations” by turning corpses to liquid and then flushing them down the drain.
The local authority have granted planning permission for a crematorium to fit a £300,000 Resomator device.
The machine, already in use across America, turns corpses into soft bone and brown liquid in three hours.
The procedure is said to be more environmentally friendly than traditional cremations.
But a water company have refused to issue the council with a “trade effluent” permit which would allow the scheme to begin.
Sandy Sullivan, 61, founder of Resomation, says “dozens” of British funeral directors are interested in his machine.
He said: “There is no technical reason why the liquid can’t go down the drain. It is a very treatable organic liquid. It is sterile and there is no DNA in it.
“We are copying nature. The body dissolves by soil bacteria and it is a very long process.
“This is a third option, other than cremation and burial. Resoma in Latin means ‘rebirth of the human body’. When I die, this is the way that I want to go.”
Biochemist Sullivan’s machines are built in a Yorkshire workshop and three are already operating in America.
Sandwell metropolitan borough council, near Birmingham, have given planning permission for Rowley Regis to install one of the devices.
But the crematorium, which is councilowned, needs a licence from Severn Trent water to dispose of funeral waste down the drains. Each body processed in this way creates about 1500 litres of fluid.
Severn Trent say trade effluent permits only cover waste disposal, not dissolved bodies.
It is understood the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have been asked to step in.
A source at industry trade body Water UK said: “We have serious concerns about the public acceptability of this.
“It is the liquefied remains of the dead going into the water system. We don’t think the public will like the idea.”