Smiths Falls, Ont., funeral business dissolves the dead, pours them into town sewers

Waterworks officials in a small town southwest of Ottawa are monitoring afuneral company that hasbecome the first in Ontario to useanalkalinesolution to dissolve human remains,and then drain the leftover coffee-coloured effluents into thesewer system.

Aquagreen Dispositionsbegan operating in a rentalunit within the former Rideau Regional Centre in Smiths FallsinMay2015 after receiving a licence from the Ontario government. Hilton's Unforgettable Tails, a parallel business handling the remains ofpets, had been using the same process for a couple of years prior to Aquagreen Dispositions, but it took longer to get a licence to handle human remains.

The owner, Dale Hilton, who is from a family of funeral home operators in Smiths Falls,said hewatched as the "green wave" swept through the funeral industry, bringing biodegradable caskets and urns.

• Urban Death Project: acase for composting your dead body
• Bio-cremation: why burn a body when you can dissolve it?
• Green Party calls for natural burials as option to caskets, cremation

Hilton said he started the alkaline hydrolysisbusiness in the newlynamedGalipeau Centreas an alternative to the traditional, energy-usingflame-basedcremation process.

"It brings yourbody back to its natural state," Hilton said. "It's the same way as being buried in the ground, but instead of taking 15, 20 years to disintegrate, it does it in a quicker process. And it's all environmentallyfriendly."

Environmentallyfriendly 'cremation'

So-called green cremations made their way into Canada from the U.S. several years ago, crossing the border into Saskatchewan, and werealso recently approved in Quebec.

Proponents of the process saytraditionalcremations typically take betweenthree and four hours to complete and releaseabout250 kilogramsof carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Hilton'ssystem usespotash, salt and water to break down a human bodyin a heated, pressurized vessel resembling an MRI machine.

After most of the body's organic material is dissolved in the alkaline solution, thedark-coloured, caustic fluidgoes through two filter systems atAquagreenDispositionsbefore it's sent into the Smiths Falls sewage treatment system.

'Nothing to be concerned about'

BeforeAquagreenDispositions opened,TedJoynt, the superintendent of facilities for Smiths Falls and the municipal employeeresponsible for water treatment, inspected the business.

"We keep an eye on these things," saidJoynt, whose staffsamplesthe water discharged by the users of theGalipeauCentre campus weeklyat the point where it enters thetown'ssewer system.

Joynt said staff measured twospikes in the output readings from theGalipeauCentreover the last year,butthose measurements werewithin the rangeacceptable for other commercial water users, and in any case the abnormalities couldn't bedefinitively traced backtoAquagreenDispositions.

"We consistently monitorfor about the last year. [It's]nothing to be concernedabout, nothing more than what happens at other industries," saidJoynt, adding that the townwould increase the frequency of sampling if there were concernsabout abnormallypoor discharge.

Joynt acknowledgedthe processing of a large number of bodies could be challenging for the water treatment plant.

"It could be a problem. We haven't experienced that yet. I don't know how many bodies they'd have to do in a day forthat to be a problem," he said.

"The liquid mixes with all the other wastewater from the Galipeau Centre, so it tends to dilute it down quite a bit before it gets into our pipes."

Remaining bones dried, pressed into powder

The computerizedAquagreenDispositions system takesless than two hours to dissolve mostorganic material.

Once the cycle is complete, the caustic fluid from the pressure vessel passes through two filtersand on into the municipal sewer system,leavingonly the skeleton behind.

Those bones, soft and wet from the alkaline hydrolysis process,are then dried in a convection oven,pressed into a fine whitepowderand finallyreturned to the loved one's family to be scattered.

The total weight of thepowdered calcium phosphatematter that is returned, Hilton said, isbetween three and five kilograms.

"It's 100percentgreen," said Hilton, who has completednearly 200 flame-free cremations since opening last year, with business growing each month.

I think this is the way of the future, this green technology.- Dale Hilton, owner of AquagreenDispositions

"I think this is the way of the future, this green technology," he said.

"Flame-based [cremation]is not environmentally friendly, but up until this point, that's the only thing we've had. Now, I think people are looking at it a different way."

About 280 litresof alkalinewater solution are needed to dissolve anaverage-sizedhuman body. The heated, pressurized vessel requires an amountof electricityequivalent to that used by a refrigerator, Hilton said.

Artificial hip joints,surgical plates, screws, heartstentsand other pieces of surgical hardware inserted in the body over a person's lifetime are unharmed by the process. Hilton said there's a program torecyclethat specialized medical hardware, donating itto hospitals in developing countries wherecosts are prohibitively high.

"You're entering yourself back to your natural state as you come into this world.You come in by water, and you leave by water," said Hilton. "It's green, all the way around."