Kaniva News commentary
The suggestion by former Minister of Health Dr Saia Piukala that cremation be considered an alternative to burial deserves consideration.
As Kaniva News reported yesterday, Dr Piukala, made the suggestion because of the potential damage to graveyards along the coast from rising seas caused by climate change.
He raised the issue after Tonga’s Minister for Lands and Service said the Government was looking for land to relocate the burial sites for the cemeteries close to the coastline.
It is certainly time to think ahead like this to plan for the problems of climate change, but are there other alternatives worth considering?
While cremation might seem to be a way to overcome the advances of climate change, there have been claims that cremation actually adds to the problem of global warming.
According to the National Geographic, cremation uses a great deal of fuel and results in millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere each year.
This will depend on what method is used. In western countries cremation generally takes place within what are essentially giant ovens burning gas.
While laws generally require crematoria to install filters on their chimneys to capture poisonous gasses that may come from the bodies, there have been questions about how well they work.
It has also been claimed they do not stop carbon dioxide or heat being released into the atmosphere.
According to research by Virginia University, emissions from crematoria may include carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen chloride gas, hydrogen fluoride, mercury vapour and organic compounds that may produce carcinogens.
All cultures have different ways of burying the dead. Muslims are usually buried within 24 hours of death. In Tibet, local tradition includes what are termed sky burials, in which bodies are left out on a mountain for vultures.
In India, Hindus burn bodies on an open-air pyre. This practice means millions of trees are cut down every year. Because the cremations are held to rivers, it also contributes to air and river pollution.
In the United States and the United Kingdom there has recently been an increasing push for processes that essentially dissolves the body.
US firm Recompose puts bodies in a closed vessel with woodchips, alfalfa and straw grass. The body is slowly rotated to allow microbes to break it down.
The company’s head, Katrina Spade, claimed the process prevented 1.4 tonnes of carbon being released into the atmosphere, compared with cremation. She said there was a similar saving compared to traditional burial when transportation and the construction of the casket were taken into account.
The other method on offer uses a machine called a Resomater, a pressurised canister in which corpses are submerged in a mixture of water heated to 150C and potassium hydroxide for three to four hours until the flesh is dissolved, leaving behind only soft, greyish bones.
After being dried in an adjacent oven, these are ground down into paper-white powder, while the fluid is sent to a water treatment plant for disposal.
The technology was initially developed in the US to dispose of cows during a decade-long foot-and-mouth epidemic.
Dr Dean Fisher, a doctor at the University of California, said everything was recyclable.
The 946 litres used on each body could be used as fertiliser because of the nutrients in it, he said.
Dr Fisher acknowledged that some people found the idea of dissolving a loved one’s body distasteful.
Even without the repugnance some people might feel about the process, the fact is that processes like these require infrastructure Tonga does not have.
Even a crematorium requires fuel that would need to be imported and this would reduce any benefit it might have to the environment.
There is another alternative that could be seen as posing no harm to the environment: Burial at sea
There is a partial precedent for this in the funeral service for the victims of the Princess Ashika tragedy in 2009 when a fleet of boats gathered offshore to remember the dead and lower a grave marker onto the wreck.
Acceptance of burial at sea may require a significant change in some people’s attitudes and practices in remembering their dead.
However, burial at sea rather than in the ground need not necessarily affect customary rites of mourning, funeral or church services and alternative sites of mourning to graves could be established on land.
It is also possible to designate particular areas of the sea for this purpose so that the practice is carefully controlled.
In New Zealand burials at sea have to take place in one of five designated areas and the Environmental Protection Agency lays down rules on how the procedure should take place.
It is likely that in finding a solution to burying bodies in the traditional way there will have to be changes in attitude and perhaps in practice. For some people this may not be easy.
Whatever solution is finally chosen, Dr Piukala has done a service to Tonga in raising the issue of how the kingdom takes care of its dead as it faces the challenge of climate change.
The main points
- The suggestion by former Minister of Health Dr Saia Piukala that cremation be considered an alternative to burial deserves consideration.
- It is certainly time to think ahead like this to plan for the problems of climate change.
