Promession Promises Green Future
OCTOBER 3, 2007 TAGS:
By Sam Wood
When it comes to funeral arrangements, a Swedish biologist would like you to think outside the pine box.
She's Susanne Wiigh-Masak, 49, and she has patented a process " U.S. Pat. No. 4,067,091 " that freeze-dries a human body and reduces it to granules just like instant coffee, but pinkish beige in color.
Her method, which she calls Promession, is the flip side of cremation. Why, she asks, reduce the body to sterile ash, or seal it away in a steel casket, when it can be transformed into life-giving nutrients for the soil?
The first Promession facility is scheduled to open next year in Jonkoping, Sweden, as an environmentally friendly option to cremation, which releases a number of pollutants up smoke stacks: nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride and traces of mercury from dental fillings.
Wiigh-Masak's process dips the dearly departed into liquid nitrogen and freezes the body at minus 321 degrees. Vibrations from an ultrasound machine reduce the brittle body in 60 seconds to a coarse powder, which is then run through a vacuum chamber to remove water. A metal extractor separates out surgical parts, dental fillings, and other medical devices.
What's left is about 60 pounds of dry, odorless organic matter, said Wiigh-Masak, who has experimented with pigs and cattle. The process will cost about the same as a cremation, which is about one-fifth the $6,000 tab of an average funeral. And no formaldehyde from embalming fluid will leach into the groundwater.
The remains can be placed in a biodegradable container made of compressed starch, buried in a shallow grave, and topped with a sapling or a bush. In less than a year, it all turns into living soil,
feeding the tree or roses blooming overhead.
Wiigh-Masak envisions memorial parks tended by professional gardeners. I'd like to come back as a rhododendron, a Cunningham white," she said from her home, near Gothenburg. "I have several in the garden myself. It's very lovely. It's always great to imagine what you'll be when you grow up."
Bill McGuinness, manager of the McGuinness Funeral Home in Woodbury, N.J., said the process sounded like an appealing option. "People have a mind-set of either burial or cremation. This would add a third dimension to the equation," he said. "If there's a demand, we'll offer it."
Wiigh-Masak conceived Promession as an ecologically friendly way of dealing with death. Americans have already shown a growing interest in green burials. About a half-dozen green cemeteries have sprung up across the nation since the first opened in 1996 in South Carolina, said Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance.
Wiigh-Masak said she hoped that as interest in green burials grew, so might interest in Promession. She will visit the United States this summer to discuss the process with officials in Austin, Texas.
Her idea has attracted attention in Britain, where 247 publicly funded crematoriums face strict new emissions standards to reduce the chemicals they release.
Bill Sucharski of Philadelphia Crematories Inc. said it was only a matter of time before tougher emissions standards became law here.
This is cool," he said of Promession, "but I don't know how it would be received by the public. It will be consumer-demand driven, just like green funerals."
Ed Defort, managing editor of American Funeral Director magazine, in Ocean County, N.J., agrees. As baby boomers move to what he called the "drop-off point," he said, he expects more alternatives to traditional burials.
They say all throughout their lives the boomers have changed every institution that they've touched," he said. "The funeral business is not going to be immune."
Sam Wood is a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
RELATED CONTENT
COMMENTS (4)
Latest News Delivered to Your Inbox - Sign up with our site and you will get the latest news about people and subjects that interest you.
William Filber wrote on May 5, 2010 9:38am
I would also like too know when it will be available within the United States of America, and where can we find more updated and contact information regarding Promession. [Report Comment]
Nita Nettleton wrote on February 23, 2010 8:59am
Is this available anywhere in the US yet? I want to learn more. I had always planned to be cremated, but freeze drying is better. The process seems simple enough, but what hoops are there for an operator to store and use liquid nitrogen? [Report Comment]
Ms. Boardman wrote on August 30, 2007 9:28pm
'I like the idea. I would like to be a giant weeping willow tree. But what happens when the plant or tree dies? Do you have another funeral?' [Report Comment]
Ms. Bailey wrote on August 3, 2007 4:35pm
'What a grand idea! When I "grow up" I would like to be a Delaware Valley White Azalea surrounded by ajuga ground cover and maybe some columbine...' [Report Comment]
RELATED CONTENT
