In 2023, according to the British "Guardian" and "Daily Mail" reports, the largest funeral service company in its home country will officially launch the "water cremation" service by the end of 2023, which is also a new type of funeral method introduced by the United Kingdom after more than 100 years of development since cremation was legalized in 1902.
After the launch of this new funeral method, it also caused an uproar on major Internet social platforms, so that countless netizens began to discuss, the reason why there is such a big impact, everything is because the water burial proposed by the United Kingdom is different from the water burial we understand in daily life.
From the point of view of the most basic water burial in ancient times, it is to make a raft, put the body of the deceased on it, and then push the bamboo raft to float freely into the distance.
Modern water burial has a very solemn process and ritual, after the death of a person, cremation is carried out first, and after the cremation is completed, the staff will hand over the ashes to the family, and the ashes of the deceased are usually packed in a degradable columbarium.
Then the family holds the ashes of the deceased to the fixed ocean area, after boarding the ship in place, the ashes are sunk into the sea one by one, and the sea burial is completed, a few months later, the ashes are degraded, and the deceased can pass away with the seawater.
However, the implementation of sea burial does not mean that it is buried, but needs to be approved and supervised, on the one hand, to protect the marine environment, and on the other hand, to prevent people from disposing of corpses abnormally.
Then some netizens may have questions, then after the cremation of the deceased, I can't just secretly scatter the ashes into the sea, that still needs such a cumbersome process, but if the ashes are scattered into the sea without permission, it is an illegal act, and the corresponding punishment will be punished, of course, the punishment object is definitely not the deceased, but the family who threw the ashes.
But the UK's upcoming water burial is the complete opposite, in which the body of the deceased is placed in a biodegradable bag, which is then placed again in a container filled with pressurized water and chemicals.
At the same time, it is boiled at a high temperature of hundreds of degrees, steamed and boiled for several hours, and when the time is up, only bones are left in the container, which is more environmentally friendly than cremation.
After seeing this news, many netizens finally understood why some people couldn't accept cremation and had to be buried, because water burial was even more unacceptable.
After the introduction of this policy in the United Kingdom, it also triggered a large number of netizens to discuss, and many netizens left messages, saying that this is not a water burial, but "boiling", this practice in the United Kingdom is very similar to a kind of torture in ancient times, referred to as "cooking corpses", the only difference is between the living and the dead.
There are also many netizens who ridiculed: "The water burial is boiled on the top, and the cremation is burned below, and the main thing is energy conservation and environmental protection"......
The bones are then crushed by the staff for a second time, and then packed into containers and returned to the relatives of the deceased.
In addition, the remains processed in this way produce one-third less greenhouse gases than cremation, and the energy consumed after water burial is only one-seventh that of cremation. ”
Northland Water's proposal has even been approved, and the company will discharge the water from the funeral into the drainage system as "commercial wastewater," which is also subject to public opinion before the funeral method is facted.
Although at the beginning, the vast majority of people could not accept this funeral method, but after professional explanations, a small number of people said that they would choose this method after their death.
In an interview, Gill Stewart, the general manager of the funeral company, said: "At the moment, the only option for people is burial or cremation. We can see from the rapid spread of various new funeral methods that when people have more choices, it is a good thing for the deceased and those who plan for their own end-of-life in advance. ”
Not only for people, as early as 2023, a media in Singapore reported a "water burial" for pets, and it is slowly becoming popular, the pet ashes after the "water cremation" are handed over to its owner, and it is okay to keep it as a souvenir or to bury it if you want to take it home, and the most important thing is that it will not pollute the environment.
"In the past decade, there has been an increased emphasis on ecological protection and sustainable development, coupled with the fact that more and more people want to be part of nature or be in the natural environment after death, so more people are starting to think about the impact of their dead bodies on the natural environment," he said. ”
In fact, this new type of funeral method has been legalized in Ireland, the United States and other countries a long time ago, but in the process of implementation, it is difficult for the public to accept, so it is difficult to promote.
The news of the legalization of "water burial" in the United Kingdom last year, and at the same time, it took a lot of effort to promote it, so that this matter has attracted the attention of countless people, and the main purpose is to protect the environment.
But there are also many netizens who put forward the opposite opinion, they have not considered that clean water is a resource, when carrying out "water incineration", not only consumes a lot of water, but also is likely to pollute the recycling process of water resources when it is discharged into the sewer after the end of water incineration, whether it is really environmentally friendly, this is still a question.
And some netizens left a message under the news, washing the body of the deceased into the sewer after melting, which is a great impact on the psychology of the people and the psychology of the local people, and most foreign netizens also said that it is difficult to accept this way of disposing of the body.
Some people also commented that burial and cremation were acceptable in the past, but now they have to "boil soup", so will there be "fried, steamed, and braised in the future"??? Do you want to "sashimi"???
In fact, the outrageous funeral is not only the "water burial" in the United Kingdom, but also the "balloon burial" in Japan, which is a new type of funeral.
A strange funeral in Japan
In addition to cremation, the Japanese also invented a new type of funeral, which is called "cosmic burial" if it sounds good, and "balloon funeral" if it doesn't sound good.
It is after the deceased is cremated, the bones of the burned body are loaded into balloons, and the family of the deceased watches these balloons slowly fly into the sky, and finally slowly disappear into the unemployed.
When this funeral method came out, it was ridiculed by many netizens and said: "Zhang Wansen, look, it's too milky.......
Although I don't understand this practice, I still respect the deceased......
Article sources:
China Youth Network, July 3, 2023--- The United Kingdom will implement water burial for the first time, which is more environmentally friendly than cremation
Guangming.com, July 4, 2023--- The United Kingdom will first recommend "water burial": the body is boiled at a high temperature of 160 degrees Celsius to dissolve fat and tissue within 4 hours
Red Star News, July 7, 2023--- The cemetery is too expensive and no one pays tribute! In Japan, it is popular to have "balloon funerals" where ashes fall into the atmosphere