For our generation, cremation has become a stock-standard option (in New Zealand, Christchurch was the frist place to have cremations), but it is really interesting to hear funeral directors from the US talk about how resistant they have been to cremation. They say it is because they did not really understand that you could have an open casket and a funeral service prior to cremation.
The open casket is core to business in the US because embalming is where they see their profits and their unique selling point, as it were (well, according to a comment by a head of the national funeral directors in the US).
The potential banning of formaldahyde in the EU due to its correlation with cancer, poses huge problems for embalmers. There are other products, but they simply don't work that well. This is bound to be a huge topic at the upcoming Funeral Expo in Boston next month.
The environmentally concious are concerned about the toxins involved in the embalming process as well as the big carbon footprint caused by cemetary maintainence and cremation. But perhaps a solution is at hand.When I discussed the method developed in Sweden for freezing a body with liquid nitrogen and vibrating it to dust with a US funeral director, his reaction was immediate: 'Will never work, people find it disgusting'.
I take comfort in the fact that the funeral industry has not been very accurate in its predictions to date.
This is the process:
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