John, we mentioned– I mentioned right at the top water cremation. IRA FLATOW: Let’s get into some of the alternatives that we can talk about. And of course, I was introduced to this by Karla. This is one of the more interesting applications that I’m actually currently working on. I’m a professor in the School of Engineering.Īnd I work on biological systems, biological transformations. DeathLAB is led by Karla Rothstein from the GSAPP, the Graduate School of Architecture, Policy, and Planning. KARTIK CHANDRAN: I’m only part of DeathLAB. Tell us about– what is the DeathLAB like at Columbia? And Kartik Chandran is an environmental engineer and research associate at the DeathLAB at Columbia.

It’s a pleasure to be on this show with you.

John Troyer is director of the Center for Death and Society at the University of Bath in England. The amount of resources traditional funerals use are changing the way people think about their final resting place, and my next guests are going to talk about why people are choosing alternative funerary practice. Green burials don’t use embalming fluid to preserve the body and the caskets have to be biodegradable.

Many cemeteries across the country now offer green burial sites. Now you may not have heard of this type of cremation, but 15, 15 states have legalized the practice.Īlternative funeral options are becoming more popular now. This is, instead of burning human remains at 1,400 degrees like in a traditional cremation, water cremation, as the name suggests, uses a mixture of water and lye along with heat and pressure to break down the remains. IRA FLATOW: Earlier this year, Utah legalized something called water cremation or alkaline hydrolysis. Plus, Candi Cann, an associate professor at Baylor University and author of the book Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century, chats about how social media and other digital platforms are helping people memorialize the dead. John Troyer, director of the Center of Death and Society at the University of Bath, and Kartik Chandran, environmental engineer at the Death Lab at Columbia University, join Ira Flatow to look beyond the traditional funeral.

Meanwhile, many cemeteries across the country now offer green burial sites-sites that ban embalming fluid and use biodegradable caskets.Īs climate-conscious consumers consider their final arrangements, alternative funerals like a water cremation or a green burial are becoming more popular in the face of resource-heavy traditional funerals. Unlike traditional cremation, which burns human remains at 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, water cremation uses a mixture of water and lye, along with heat and pressure, to break down the remains. Credit: Igor Golovniov, via Shutterstock.Įarlier in 2018, Utah became the 15th state to legalize water cremation, or alkaline hydrolysis.

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