With the increasing awareness all across the globe related to the environment and its wellness, even the methods of last rites are changing. In Britain, different communities from Christianity have come together after thousands of years, in order to turn their traditions of conducting last rites into environment-friendly ones. Keeping in mind the religious, traditional and practical viewpoints, these communities are brainstorming to come up with methods which would lead to lesser pollution.
On Monday, during the common meeting between Britain’s Church of England and other prominent churches of the Christian communities, they tried to reach a consensus on decomposing dead bodies in water or producing manure out of them, rather than cremating or burying them. The options of eco-friendly methods of performing last rites from all across the globe were also looked at.
The method of disposing a dead body off using water is known as ‘aquamation’, under which the dead body is kept for 3-4 hours in a cylinder filled with water, which has alkalis like potassium hydroxide mixed in it. And ‘terramation’ is a process for the final disposition of the dead body wherein the body is turned into compost with the action of microbes, after all foreign objects like pacemakers are taken out of the body for the process.
