Plan for water cremations rejected by Health Ministry
A Christchurch company hoping to give New Zealanders a greener sendoff is considering its legal options after being refused permission to offer water cremations.
Water Cremation Aotearoa director Debbie Richards confirmed the Ministry of Health had last month rejected their application for water cremation at a Christchurch funeral home.
The method, also known as alkaline hydrolysis, is already legal in parts of Canada and the United States and a facility recently opened in Tasmania. It involves gently dissolving a body in a chemical bath over three to four hours. What’s left is an inert liquid that could be flushed into the wastewater system, and porous white bones that could be ground into a powder and returned to families as ashes.
Richards said she first approached the ministry in 2018, hoping the alternative method of cremation could become legal here too.
Over the next five years, regular correspondence between Water Cremation Aotearoa and the ministry led Richards to think that water cremation would be included in the Act, she said.
“I believe I was working closely with the burial and cremation team on creating regulation around our new process so that the public could have faith that it is not only cleaner, but dignified and safe to operate.”
The company pushed on with plans to open a facility and was granted resource consent from the Christchurch City Council in 2023. A bank loan was sought, but not yet finalised as more clarity on the legality of operating the technology was needed.
Water Cremation Aotearoa submitted its application to the ministry in October 2023, asking to operate water cremation machinery at a new funeral home on St Asaph St, owned by Bell, Lamb & Trotter.
Richards said she was caught off guard on March 28 when director-general of health Dr Diana Sarfati denied the application.
Despite her previous communication with the ministry, she was told in her rejection letter that “under the current legislation there is no mechanism to consider applications for alkaline hydrolysis, as it does not meet the legal definition of cremation under the Burial and Cremation Act 1964”.
A ministry spokesperson said despite public consultation in 2019 and 2020, there was currently no timeframe for potential cremation legislative reform and the implications of climate change were one of the things under consideration.
The response left Richards frustrated that New Zealanders could not use the service, which she said was greener than traditional cremation.
Water Cremation Aotearoa was requesting legal advice, but Richards did not want to discuss what that might lead to, instead saying “there is a call to act on climate change, and water cremation is something that could be done right now”.