Many funeral homes in San Leandro, CA are now offering hydro cremation services. Do you know what hydro cremation services are or how they compare to standard cremations? Keep reading to learn more about hydro cremation to see if it’s the right choice for you and your family.

To begin, hydro cremation, sometimes referred to as alkaline hydrolysis, is a water-based process that helps reduce bodily remains to dust and ash, like standard cremations. However, unlike cremations, hydro cremation uses water instead of fire.

The goal of any type body disposition method, whether it be cremation, burial or hydro cremation, is to break the body down into its most basic elements: bone and dust. The differences in body disposition methods begin in the speed in which the body breaks down and the method. For example, in a burial, the body is broken down by the microorganisms in the soil and this process can take around 25 years. In a standard cremation, the body is broken down by heat in a few hours. In hydro cremation, the body is broken down by a solution of water, sodium, and potassium hydroxide in just a few hours.

How does hydro cremation work? The body is put in a stainless-steel container in which the water, sodium, and potassium hydroxide are mixed together. The temperature in the container is then raised to help the mixture circulate over the body and reduce it to dust and bone. Really, hydro cremation is just an accelerated version of natural decomposition. Especially since, as the human body is made up of mostly water, it makes sense for us to be returned to water and be a part of the natural life cycle when we die.

There are many reasons why many people think that hydro cremation is a much better body disposition method than burial or standard cremation. One is that hydro cremation is much better for the environment than its counterparts and much more sustainable in the long run. Standard cremation often emits a ton of carbon, vaporized mercury and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but hydro cremation emits nothing. Because of these emissions, standard crematories require expensive abatement or filtration systems, but hydro cremation providers need none. Hydro cremation also has a low carbon footprint as its uses less fossil fuel and produces almost no greenhouse gases. In fact, hydro cremation’s carbon footprint is about one quarter that of standard cremation.

Hydro cremation is also thought to be much better for the environment than standard cremation or ground burial because it does not require the removal of implants like pacemakers, allows medical devices and implants to be recycled, does not burn caskets and therefore reduces the use of natural resources and the production of CO2, and is not contaminated by harmful bacteria or chemicals. Hydro cremation is also green because it does not create harmful by-products, but rather creates a solution of soaps, peptides, amino acids and sugar and it uses about 1/10th the energy of standard cremation

Do you want to learn more about hydro cremations? Deer Creek Funeral Service, a San Leandro, CA funeral home, is here to help.