Aquamation gains popularity as funeral home becomes 2nd in Quebec to dissolve the dead

Quebecers looking for a more eco-friendlyalternative to cremation may find their match in aquamation,sometimes called bio-cremation.

Like cremation, the process involves reducing a body to ashes, but instead ofincineration, aquamation uses a water-based alkaline solution.

The processreduces the time to decompose a body from 20 years to up to12hours.

By the end of August, a chain of funeral homes inAbiti-Tmiscaminguewill become the second in Quebec to offer aquamation, after a home in Granby.

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"The ecological side of aquamation is its primary goal," said Patrick Blais, director of operation at La Rsidence Funraire de l'Abitibi-Tmiscamingue. "[It's] to have little orno pollution when we aquamate the deceased."

"We know that cremation pollutes a lot. Each cremation emits a lot of carbon dioxide and several other pollutants into the atmosphere, which aquamation wouldn't do [because] it uses warm water instead of fire to discard human remains," he said.

100-degreealkalinesolution for 12 hours

In May 2015, Le Sieur in Granby became the first Quebec funeral home to offer aquamation.

Charles Arsenault, its funeral director, explained at the time that aquamation submerges the body in a mixture of 100 C water with an alkaline solution comprised of sodium and potassium for 10 to 12 hours.

"It's essentially an accelerated version of what takes place during natural decomposition," he told CBC'sQuebec AM.

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Like cremation, the end result is ash. But withaquamationall human tissue is dissolved exceptthe bones. With cremation,80 per cent of bones remain intact.

Bones are later dried and pressed into a white powder to be returned to the family.

Is aquamation the new way to go?

Cremation remainsthe preferred choice forQuebecers.Blais says 91 per cent of the people who use the services of the Abiti-Tmiscaminguefuneral home still choose cremation.

He believes these high numbers are due to more peoplerejecting traditional burials.

"People slowly moved away from the Church, and with that, Christian values and the Church'sfuneral protocol," Blaisexplained.