Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa.
Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on life. Inside Bell, Lamb and Trotter, Christchurch’s oldest funeral home first established in 1872, there’s an enormous empty room nestled behind the cosy, softly lit chapel. At first glance, there’s not much to it – a charcoal grey shag rug, a bouquet of orange and white flowers, and the corner desk of an opportunist seizing their own temporary office.
What’s more interesting about the room is not what’s in it, but what is not. One day it will be the site of New Zealand’s first resomator, an SUV-sized stainless steel machine that allows for water cremation. During the water cremation process, the body is placed inside, and over three to four hours is dissolved in a solution of 95% water 5% alkaline solution (potassium hydroxide). The body then becomes a sterile liquid that contains no DNA, that can be treated like wastewater.
It’s a method that has been found to be 90% less harmful to the environment than flame cremation. On average, flame cremation produces 242kg of carbon dioxide, or roughly the same amount as driving a petrol car from Christchurch to Cape Reinga. Now legal in over 30 states in the USA, and having just recently launched in Hobart, Australia, the water cremation tide is on the rise. Most notably, it was requested by Desmond Tutu after his death in 2022.
Christchurch local Debbie Richards founded Water Cremations NZ, and has been leading the charge to bring the technology here for the last six years. With a background in nursing and midwifery, Richards became interested in alternative burial methods after staying next to a crematorium on a trip to Bali in 2018. She came home, started doing her research, and quickly discovered water cremation was taking off in the United States.
Later travelling to the States herself to see the technology first hand and meet with industry experts, Richards was convinced that water cremation was the future of death. “It’s very respectful, it’s very dignified, and it’s environmentally friendly,” she said. “There’s no carbon being emitted from the process, and all that’s left are the bones and anything that’s not of the body, like pacemakers or hip implants.”
While water cremation is still not legal in Aotearoa, Richards’ campaign has had a recent burst of energy in officially signing up with Bell, Lamb and Trotter, Christchurch’s oldest funeral home and one of the only remaining family-run options in the region. Richards first met managing director Andrew Bell after her own father passed away in 2019. They got chatting about water cremation, and Bell began researching.
“My first thought was ‘oh yeah, here’s somebody that’s coming into the industry and telling us how to do our jobs’,” laughs Bell. But after a trip to Minnesota to see water cremation first hand, he too returned home convinced of its potential. “To see how they were operating, how impressive their facilities were, and the practicality of it all, it just seemed like a no-brainer that this was something that we should be doing.”
While an attractive option for the future-focussed, Bell acknowledges that the death industry moves at the pace of a funeral march. “There hasn’t been a major technological change here since 1909, which was when the first cremation happened in New Zealand, and before that was embalming in 1896,” he explains. “Considering technology has changed a lot in over 100 years, there are definitely different ways we could be doing things.”
The Burial and Cremation Act of 1964 is so old that it still mentions pounds and shillings. “It’s something that the government doesn’t really want to look at,” says Bell. “There’s probably some squeamishness, and politicians probably don’t want to be associated with death.” Recently commissioning an independent report into the practice by GHD, Bell and Richards are awaiting a response from Christchurch City Council.
In the meantime, Richards encourages people to look at the Water Cremation NZ page, and adds she is happy to speak with absolutely anyone about the viability of the practice. Over the years she has met with a wide range of MPs, end of life carers, death doulas, and local iwi representatives to ensure that all perspectives are considered. “Not necessarily everybody has to choose it, but this is just another option.”
One of those connections she made was Mereana Kahurangi-Leaf (Te Aitanga a Mahaki, Ngāpuhi, Te Arawa, Ngāti Porou), who has been running Pōhutukawa Funeral Guides in Gisborne for the past year. “We’ve only got one provider here, so we didn’t have many options,” she says. “The more greener options that are out there now really resonate with me – the future of our whenua is what I’m really keen to jump on top of.”
Kahurangi-Leaf found Richards while doing her own research on water cremation. “It’s a much more natural process. Our bodies are predominantly made up of water, so this seems like the normal transition.” There’s economic considerations too, with Kahurangi-Leaf referencing local burial plots that have increased by 48% in price. “I just think we need to catch up,” she says. “There are more eco-friendly ways we can get buried.”
That said, Kahurangi-Leaf acknowledges that the practice will not be for everyone. “I know a lot of Māori shy away from it because we don’t cremate,” she says. “The majority of us tend to bury our tūpāpaku, with all their stuff, their essence of what they are.” Embalming is also common practice before a multi-day tangihanga. “The majority of us do it because it’s what we just know,” she says, “but it is not very good on our environment.”
Water cremation is about empowering people to make the right choice for them. “We’re always talking about our mokopuna, the next generation, and looking at options like this is a way of making a greener earth for our future generations,” she says. “I just don’t see any downside to getting resomation added into those options.” She jokes she’ll be “riding Debbie’s coattails” when resomation finally makes it to our shores.
“She’s going to be the pioneer blazing the way, but we at Pōhutukawa funerals are totally there supporting her however we can.”
Back at Bell, Lamb and Trotter, Richards and Bell are very aware that eyes are on them. “I think there’s a lot of people watching us to see how this goes,” says Bell. “It’s frustrating that everything is taking so long when we’re supposed to be in a climate emergency.” Even when they do get approval, the resomator machine is currently in Leeds and would take months to be assembled and shipped to Lyttelton harbour.
And despite swimming upstream for over six years, Richards remains steadfast in the potential for water cremation to not only revolutionise the local death industry and also cement Christchurch as the first city in Aotearoa to do so. “It will just be adding to the great innovation that is happening here already,” she says. “It’ll be great for Christchurch to have it first, but we want as many others to have access to it as possible.”
Hearing from individuals who want water cremation for themselves also keeps her afloat. “We’ve had people reading about Debbie in the papers and that have asked for it, and we’ve had to say we can’t provide it just yet,” says Bell, who adds that some of those people have since passed away. “There are a lot of people out there who want to die having as little impact on the environment as possible,” says Richards. “That spurs me on.”
To flush any remaining squeamishness out of the subject, Richards offers up a final message and a particularly useful allegory. “This is simply exciting and exciting and a great thing for the city to be able to offer, and it obviously aligns with all the climate change objectives to reduce emissions that are embedded in our law now,” she says. “Think of it like this: Someone had to be the first person to bring the electric car here, too.”