A LOCAL authority is considering freeze-drying corpses as an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation or burial.

The technique, called promession, involves dipping the body in liquid nitrogen. Vibration then shatters it into powder.

Officials from Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council, in Cheshire, are planning a fact-finding trip to Sweden, where a town in the south aims to be the first to adopt the technique.

Mary Slinn, the council’s cemetery and crematoria manager, said: “This is an alternative system of dealing with bodies as opposed to burial or cremation. It’s very similar to the cremation but it’s totally emission free, hence it’s something which should at least be investigated.”

The pioneering process freezes the body very quickly, then immersing in liquid nitrogen to cool it to -196C. This makes the body so brittle that even a jolt can cause it to crumble. After shattering, the remains are dried and any moisture vaporised, removing about 70 per cent of the original weight. The remains are then placed in a metal separator which removes surgical parts such as replacement hips and metal fillings.

When the process is complete, relatives can opt to bury their loved ones in a coffin made from corn or potato starch. This is put in a shallow grave where it will disintegrate within 6 to 12 months.

Family members would be encouraged to plant a tree on the grave, and the compost formed by the body would give life to the tree. There would be no headstone.

Promession should cost about the same as cremation.

“The idea came to my attention when I was on holiday at the beginning of last year,” Mrs Slinn said. “I read an article about it and the idea of going back into the life cycle really appealed to me.

“It’s very, very feasible to think that this will become common practice. I am sure it will catch on eventually.”

Her council has established a task group to investigate the long-term benefits of promession with a view to phasing out cremations as early as 2007.

As cremations account for about 70 per cent of the 650,000 funerals in Britain every year, the negative environmental effect of mercury emissions from crematoria has become a cause for concern.

Susanne Wiigh-Masak, a Swedish biologist who conceived the idea, named it promession because, she said, it was the promise to return to the earth what emerged from the earth.

Next year Jonkoping, in southern Sweden, will turn its crematorium into a so-called promatorium.

Jonkoping’s decision to convert its crematorium was driven by European environmental laws which meant that the town faced a multimillion-pound bill for a new gascleaning system and furnace at its 50-year-old facility.

WAYS TO GO

• LifeGem, in Hove, East Sussex, charges between £2,000 and £13,000 for a diamond pendant or ring made from the carbon of human ashes
  
• Motorcycle Funerals offers a final ride, at £1.10 a mile, in a motorbike and sidecar — one way only
  
• Space Services, in Houston, Texas, charges £570 a gram for a loved one’s ashes to be blasted into space
  
• Eternal Reefs, an American company, adds the ashes of a relative or friend to a commercial reef in the Gulf of Mexico. Prices vary but the top rate is £2,900
  
• Heavens Above Fireworks gives displays of rockets containing cremation ashes. Prices start at £1,500

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