A cremation process that leaves only bones and brown syrup is coming to California

There will soon be a new way to (legally) dispose of human remains in California, and advocates say it’s a cut above the rest when it comes to environmental impact.

Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill into law on Sunday legalizing alkaline hydrolysis, often known as “water cremation,” as a way to dispose of human remains in the state. That means California will join 14 other U.S. states in allowing funeral homes to dissolve remains in a water and lye solution, according to Wired. The law goes into effect in 2020.

For the environmentally conscious, a benefit of the process is that it uses far less energy than traditional cremation, and doesn’t release mercury like traditional cremation does, either, according to KQED. Just one cremation — the traditional kind — burns through enough fuel to fill the tanks of two SUVs, according to The Atlantic.

“Burning grandma in fire seems to be violent,” Phil Olson, a Virginia Tech philosophy professor who studies funeral practices, told The Atlantic. “In contrast, green cremation is ‘putting grandma in a warm bath.’ ”

But water cremation has also inspired backlash by those who think it might be a little morbid to liquefy a deceased loved one. A bill to allow the process in New York several years ago was derisively called “Hannibal Lecter’s bill,” according to the Associated Press.

And in 2009, when New Hampshire upheld a ban on the process, one state representative suggested that water cremation — not traditional cremation by flame — was the cruel option.

“I don’t want to send a loved one ... down the drain to a sewer treatment plant,” state Rep. John Cebrowski said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

But how does the process actually work?

Well, it’s not all that different from what would happen to a body buried underground, experts say — except that with alkaline hydrolysis, the process is put on the fast track.

“If you were to bury a body in soil, all we’re doing is we’re speeding that up,” Dean Fisher, the head of the University of California Los Angeles’ Donated Body Program, told KQED. “We’re adding heat to that.”

First, the cadaver goes into a chamber of lye and water. It looks a bit like the machine that performs CT scans, if you were to package that inside a washing machine at a laundromat. But in practice, the contraption acts like a pressure cooker, according to the Associate Press.

Once the chamber is sealed, machine operators turn up the heat — to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit, to be specific. That’s hot enough that, as the water and lye mixture moves around, it can dissolve the cadaver in three to four hours, Wired reports.

When they open up the chamber, all that’s remaining is bones. And those can be pulverized into fine powder, according to KQED.

And the liquid that’s left over? That goes into an “accumulation tank,” according to Wired. The Associate Press described the fluid as “brownish, syrupy residue.” The liquid can be poured into the sewage system with no trouble, according to Scientific American.

A bill similar to the one that was just signed into law was introduced in 2010, but it didn’t gain traction, Scientific American reports.

KQED reports that water cremation usually costs between $150 and $500 more than traditional cremation.

This story was originally published October 17, 2017 at 9:09 PM with the headline "A cremation process that leaves only bones and brown syrup is coming to California."