So let’s talk water crematoriums. New Zealand’s first opened today in Christchurch, giving people a new option for what happens to their body after they die. It’s billed water cremations, water burials, as a more environmentally friendly alternative to flame cremation and burial.
So how does it all work? And how much has the funeral industry evolved over the years to keep up with our changing needs? And as I said earlier, how do you want to go out? Text me 2101. Andrew Malcolm is the president of the Funeral Directors Association. Andrew’s been in the business for more than 40 years and no doubt has seen it all and then some, and joins me on the line now.
Andrew, kia ora to you. Kia ora, Neil. Nice to be here.
Nice to have you here. So water cremation, this is interesting. Quite a significant step forward in the world of funerals, would you say? It is, yes, and it’s only been a more recent step really.
I know it dates back from a scientific perspective for about 100 years, but it’s only been thought about for humans in the last 18, 20 years. But when you started saying there’s a quiz with words that started with A dash, A dash, I thought, oh, anatomical, very well. But then you said another A and it stuffed my pants.
Well, maybe the A’s are flexible. I mean, you would have heard my explanation or my description of what it actually involves. Is that pretty on point, Andrew? Is that how it works? Yeah, pretty much.
When they first started developing it, it is a container, if you like, that the deceased is lowered into. It has water, potassium hydroxides added to it, which gives you that alkaline, the opposite to acid. If people are thinking about a bath full of acid, it’s the opposite.
Has a similar effect, but in a different way. They then seal it. They then compress it.
They bring it up to about 100 atmospheres. That’s quite well compressed and heat it somewhere between 90 and 160 degrees and then leave it for a few hours. The early ones literally took sort of 10, 12, 14 hours.
The very modern ones that they’re talking about in Christchurch take a lot less, more like about a similar time to a normal cremation. And then at the end, you’re left with this with this fluid, this sort of infusion. And I guess the environmentally friendly part of it is that that can kind of be disposed of.
Am I right in saying this? Pretty much any way, it’s safe. It’s safe, yes. It’s safe as any other product that you would have in a, dare I say it, but a sewage system.
So it’s sewage safe. So water can be dispersed into the normal system for treatment as any other waste product would be treated. And as you say, the technology, the concept has been around for some time.
And I know cremations of people have been legal in some countries for a while, but not in New Zealand. Has it been a bit of a process to get permissions, essentially? Well, yes, because that’s been trying to define it as cremation as water hydrolysis. So it’s not actually cremation.
But what they’re trying to do in Christchurch is use the cremation regulation because there is no regulation for this particular act, if you like, which doesn’t mean it’s illegal, because if there’s nothing saying this is how you have to do it, you can’t do it. So it’s a bit of a, you know, they were trying to get permission. We’ve been working with, the association has been working with the Ministry of Health to get new types of disposal methods put into the Act.
In fact, rewriting the Act and worked with the Law Commission on it for years, but they dropped it all in 2019. And we’re stuck with the old regulations from 1946. Is that right? Pretty outdated.
- That’s just remarkable. They did updates.
The latest update is 1973, which is still quite a long time ago. It’s more than 50 years ago. One year after the Godfather came out, my word.
Right. Well, I mean, talk to me then a bit about, you’ve been in the business for a long time, more than 40 years, although not since 1973. How has the nature of funeral services, I suppose, that feels a little euphemistic, but I suppose that’s what it is, funeral services.
How has it kind of evolved and developed over those years? Well, in my time, it’s had a complete U-turn, if you like. When I first started, we had some 90% church funerals. And if you didn’t want a church funeral, there was a JP who would say a couple of legal words over your burial or your cremation and sign the appropriate documentation.
And that was it. When I moved up to the Kapiti Coast, which was in 1992 when I bought my business, the first year we did 50% of our funerals in the church. So that was the change.
And within 10 years, we’d got to 90% non-church funerals. And that’s pretty much where we’re sitting now. And nationally, it’s a little bit similar.
There are cultural groups, obviously, that are more church-based, such as the Polynesian groups. And then, of course, some of our newer immigrants, the Chinese and the Indian, they tend to have religious, not necessarily church services, but culturally and religious services that mean they do want proper funerals as well. And has there been a switch from people being buried in plots at cemeteries or cremations to different, I guess, alternative methods of corpse disposal, which again feels like a weird thing to say, but I suppose this is the business Absolutely true.
The oldest crematorium I know of in New Zealand is Karori in Wellington, which was established in 1908. And it was established because some people wanted an alternative disposal method. But it wasn’t until after the Second World War that cremation really took off in numbers.
And it changed from like 1% 120 years ago, 115 years ago, to in the country, it’s now sitting about 70%. And where I work in Kapiti, it’s just over 80%. Is that right? 70 to 80% cremations.
That’s remarkable to me. Give us a Funerals 101, if you could, Andrew. What are the relative, quote unquote, benefits or drawbacks or the characteristics of different, you know, a burial at a cemetery versus cremation versus something like a water burial? What are the differences and, I suppose, the appealing elements of each? Yeah.
So I think for me, the key is the value of the funeral itself or the farewell itself. We always talk about funeral service, but I spoke at a conference recently, I said, let’s use the words, instead of funeral, let’s use the words farewell. Because some people say, I don’t want a funeral, but they still want their family to gather and be able to grieve.
Well, that’s a farewell. So sometimes terminology trips us off. And sometimes people say, I don’t want a service because they’re thinking church, but they really still want a gathering.
So a farewell gathering is really what we used to call a funeral service. That’s a way to gather and say goodbye. And I point this out because in New Zealand, we were very slow to rush and just have cremations with no funerals because we didn’t worry about whether it’s burial or cremation.
We were worried about having a good farewell so people could grieve well. And in other countries, they went, oh, cremation means you don’t have any farewell. So in America, for instance, they held on to burial for a very long time because they thought cremation meant you don’t have a funeral.
So what I’m saying is I don’t think it really matters whether it’s a burial, cremation, water hydrolysis, recomposing, which is decomposing the body through other methods, whether it’s putting them on a rack somewhere. The American Indians used to do where the vultures come down and eat you. Yeah, the sky burials in the mountains.
Or the one I love, the Viking funeral, you know, send you off on a boat and send an arrow up. But what really matters, I think, is what happens before that. It’s not how you’re disposed of, it’s how you’re farewelled in a very healthy way for good grief.
The solemnity of the occasion and giving the people who love you an opportunity to say goodbye. Yeah, and I think one of the big things that’s changed is almost the solemnity. We don’t need the formal ceremony anymore, but sometimes you throw the baby out of the bathwater so we have no ceremony and it doesn’t work.
A really good example, we had a funeral the other day which they said wasn’t a funeral, they just wanted a party. But they sort of felt the need for the deceased to be there. So the deceased was in the foyer, people could go and write on the casket and talk to them if they really wanted to, but they were more interested in having food and some good wine and so forth.
And at the appropriate point, we were just going to scuttle out and go, you know, we’ll tell you when you can leave. But they thought that was the best way to do it, but they couldn’t help themselves. They called everyone to attention and said, the funeral director is going to leave now, would anyone like to say some words? And without thinking too hard, they then said, bring your chairs up and we’ll sit around the casket and the funeral director can lead you and get you going.
And so all of a sudden it had turned into a thing. Right, that’s interesting. Exactly, human nature.
Yes, well, human nature, exactly. Perhaps there is a push. This is how we act in situations like this.
I mean, there are some interesting modes of farewell. I was watching a video on YouTube, Andrew, Ask a Mortician. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this account.
She’s a mortician influencer, Ask a Mortician. And she visited a person who does composting, corpse composting. Yes, yes, I love this concept.
So there’s a company in the States called Recompose, and they’ve actually almost crossed the line in the States. And I’m working with a group in New Zealand trying to do the same thing. And I think this is even more Kiwi than water cremation.
Because recomposing is basically you put, you know, when you put someone in the ground in the earth, you bury them, and then after 10 years, you might disinter them, take them out again, there’s not much left. Well, this is the same concept on steroids. So you put someone in a receptacle, so like a casket that’s lined, you put them in the casket with earth around them.
And then you put in salts and minerals and things that speed up that decomposition process. And then you seal them for six months or so. And then you unseal them, and they’re broken all down.
Basically, what’s left is the bones, which you do the same process as with cremation, they’re brittle and quite hollow. And they’re just, for the better use of a word, ground up, but they’re not really ground, they’re just sort of broken down to smaller fragments and mixed back into the earth. So you have this lovely rich compost, which you can then do something practical with.
My thought is in New Zealand, if there’s no law that lets you do that, you could then be, you could lift them out of that casket, we call it a disinterment. And then you put them back in a cemetery, perhaps a round hole that you could put a tree on. That’s beautiful, isn’t it? Yeah, I reckon that’s the future.
But that’s just me. And I have nothing against water cremation, because I think that’s probably going to be the thing for the next 10, 20 years. Yeah.
And I suppose they’re all sort of birds of a feather, really, aren’t they? It’s all an attempt to make these fairwells more environmentally friendly and more sustainable into the future. And this is where innovation happens, in the funeral space. It’s fascinating stuff.
The problem in New Zealand is the regulation, because we’ve had this pause in our regulation review. So there is no legal way of doing this. But it’s not necessarily illegal either.
So we’d love to see some movement in the statutory area so we can get something that’s more modern than 1973 or even 1946. Andrew Malcolm, fascinating stuff. Really enjoyed that.
And thanks very much for your time. Appreciate it. Pleasure.
That is Andrew Malcolm, who is the President of the Funeral Directors Association.
