The water drains into the local wastewater system. Over a 20-hour cycle, alkalized water decomposes all of the body’s proteins and fats. Read: What to read to come to terms with death Of course, burying a fish in a backyard doesn’t have a global land-use impact, but many Americans don’t have their own land for a burial or live someplace where backyard burials are impossible.Īquamation, by contrast, is compact and efficient, and generates no direct emissions of its own (unlike, say, a fire), making it one of the greenest means of final disposition. Among the more taxing impacts of burial is when land is permanently set aside for graves (rather than, say, for forests or prairies), and those graves are artfully maintained using significant amounts of water, pesticides, and more. But metal or plastic containers will sit in the soil for decades. Burial may look better: If pets are interred in a pine box or some other natural container, the animal’s body will decompose rapidly, says Ed Martin, the vice president of Hartsdale Pet Cemetery. One major cost of cremation is the carbon dioxide these flaming chambers release. No one burial or cremation extracts such a terrible toll on the environment, but in the aggregate, the remains of pets and humans have a significant impact. Although sustainability is hardly the first thing anyone thinks of when a beloved dog or cat dies, these decisions quickly add up. So-called “aquamation” has the advantage of offering pet owners a futuristic, planet-friendly alternative to cremation and burial. Techniques first used to handle the remains of livestock and lab animals have become more common for well-loved pets: One such tactic, called alkaline hydrolysis, involves rapidly decomposing a body in a stream of water. But animals remain on the leading edge of death care. Since then, cremation has become so much the default for pets and humans alike that many owners aren’t aware they have other options, Donna Shugart-Bethune, the executive director of the International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematories, told me. ![]() Pet cremation has been common in the United States for decades now: Some of the first dedicated facilities popped up in the 1970s and ’80s as the practice slowly gained purchase among humans. The owner pays the vet a fee for the arrangements, and the crematorium may return the remains in a small urn, an unassuming memorial to a lost companion. ![]() By default, many vets double as undertakers, passing on a pet’s body to a regional crematorium that accepts animal remains. When a pet is dying, many people reach out to their veterinarian one last time.
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