What do we do with all the Baby Boomers once they die? Author Ian Sutton has a new book called The Big Exit about how to deal with the impending death of a baby boomer. And he s got a guest on the show to help him answer the question.
00:05:11.580It was actually because of a funeral home way back in my hometown.
00:05:15.700I was working in my 70s, and not in my hometown exactly, but as working radio actually in a small radio station in eastern Ontario.
00:05:26.300And a funeral home in my hometown, which is Smith Falls, Ontario, had to discontinue what it was offering.
00:05:34.660It was called an alkaline hydrolysis process, which I'd never heard of, but the provincial regulatory agency pulled the plug on it, and that got me interested.
00:05:46.180So then I started looking into the whole subject, because there has to be some alternatives to burial and cremation,
00:05:55.960because we're running out of space in cemeteries, particularly urban cemeteries.
00:06:04.660And cremation has some environmental issues that are causing genuine concern.
00:06:10.460So there needs to be several new alternatives, which there are, that need to be looked at by families,
00:06:18.580but also by public policy makers and the politicians, for that matter.
00:06:28.000So before we get into the new ways and why you think that the two main ones that we now deal with are problematic,
00:06:38.200let's get back to talking about the discomfort of speaking about death.
00:06:42.960You said you worked at a radio station in Smith Falls.
00:09:21.320What's the environmental implication, impact, problem with burying people?
00:09:28.440Well, yes, I come at that subject from a point of view of the impact on the environment, groundwater and surrounding cemeteries.
00:09:40.780Because there are studies that have been done recently about leaching of chemicals into the ground and even human remains being leaked into the ground.
00:10:59.400And now cemeteries are, many of them are founding themselves underground.
00:11:08.720And so, there are very serious concerns about burial and the costs of a plot.
00:11:16.940So, okay, we can talk about the space issue in a moment.
00:11:22.540But let's talk about the leachate that you were talking about.
00:11:26.340Is it that due to our current burial techniques and bombing and everything else that we are filling ourselves with chemicals that are then problematic when we decompose in the ground?
00:11:38.980And this is a very dark conversation you and I are having, Ian.
00:14:01.140Now, green burial takes a different route.
00:14:05.600It still requires land, of course, but certain materials are not permitted with green burial, like varnish and plastics or any materials such as that.
00:14:22.820And the burials are only about 18 inches deep.
00:14:29.700And the plot can be reused after a number of years.
00:14:37.000The burial rituals in some faiths, like Judaism or Islam, you don't get a fancy casket, per se, if you're following the rules.
00:15:00.920Obviously, we may borrow some ideas from Islam and other faiths, other than Christian faiths.
00:15:12.160Orthodox Jews do not permit cremation, and neither does Islam.
00:15:18.000But they're gravitating towards green burial because there's, which can be a mix of conventional burial and green burial because it doesn't use these contaminants in the container that one is buried in and in the body itself.
00:15:41.340Yeah, I'm just sorry I'm stuck on burial.
00:15:43.460It just, it does seem to me like a circular economy.
00:15:46.000You know, we decompose if we're put in the ground.
00:15:49.140You mentioned with green burial, it's only 18 inches deep.
00:15:53.820Why that instead of six feet, which is pretty standard for what we do now, and it's seen as a way to make sure the body doesn't come back up out of the ground.
00:16:04.920Well, there's no reports of bodies coming back out of the ground, unless you're watching certain movies.
00:16:18.780There are concerns, or there have been concerns that you can put at rest that animals don't get into the grave site when green burial 18 inches below the surface.
00:18:13.240And towns like I, where I came from, there isn't a problem with the cemeteries there.
00:18:18.440Uh, they still have, and they acquire more land around them, but, but, um, that's not always possible.
00:18:25.760If you're in the city of Toronto, uh, it's very hard to, uh, find land, adjacent land to a cemetery.
00:18:34.100You have to, they, they're looking in York region to find more land for, for cemeteries, uh, to, uh, which has been under discussion for several years.
00:18:45.400Um, simply because the, the, the major, the big cemeteries in Toronto are, are out, out of, out of land and, um, and they have none to, to, to sell.
00:18:59.440So, um, there's just no, no other answers than, than finding, uh, new, new room for cemeteries.
00:19:10.680With considering how much land space there is in Canada, you'd think it wouldn't be a problem, but it is because of zoning and, and as I, what I mentioned is planning hasn't, the planning professions haven't been, been, uh, uh, dealing with the issue.
00:19:29.160I want to ask you about some of your proposals for different ways of, of dealing with this big exit, as your book is appropriately called.
00:19:37.860Uh, but first I have to ask you about cremation because I thought that was one of the environmentally friendly ways of, of dealing with bodies, or at least I did till I read the big exit.
00:19:50.280So can you explain to, to listeners what the, what's the environmental issue with, with cremation?
00:19:57.280Where, where does that, uh, image that, that I had not jive with what you see?
00:20:04.460Well, it's considered, um, it's considered definitely unfriendly, environmentally unfriendly, uh, because of the use of materials, uh, that the fuel that, that's used for burning the body and the emissions from the, from the stacks, for instance.
00:20:24.080Um, now, some, some, some crematoriums, crematoria, uh, are, have proper, uh, uh, technology that prevents some emissions from their stacks, but they're still are happening in, even in, in, in the most modern cemeteries.
00:20:45.340And, uh, and, uh, it's just, uh, I talked to a toxicologist and says, she says, she's American.
00:20:53.160She says, many cemeteries don't have any, uh, crematory, crematories don't have any, uh, methods of limiting emissions.
00:21:04.600Um, so, do they need stacks on them the way that our fossil burning power plants used to, to, to capture, um, debris for a better term, for, to capture, capture particulate?
00:21:20.380Well, they're, they're, yes, they're using that more and more, but it isn't, uh, answering the question, um, and it's, it's, uh, crematoria are not permitted near, uh, schools or housing areas, residential areas, or libraries, because of the emissions from them, mainly from their stacks.
00:21:44.080Again, we're having a dark conversation in these, these, these aren't things that I thought about before reading your book or talking to you today.
00:21:53.240Uh, you, you know, you don't just generally in the course of everyday life, you don't think about the emissions from a crematorium and, uh, and where they have to be regulated.
00:22:05.720We need to take a quick break, but when we come back, I do want to ask you about new ways.
00:22:10.240Um, some interesting ones, some involving Elon Musk, perhaps, on getting rid of bodies in the future.
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00:24:47.460The ones you mentioned, sky burial and bodies in space, are sort of outlier methods of disposition that aren't really disposition.
00:25:00.600There are such things as reef burials, but again, they're cremated remains, are placed in reefs in the ocean, which is another sort of outlier method.
00:25:22.720That was just pulling up the cost here, because I remember looking at that, I was going through, it's about $7,500, you say?
00:25:30.640I mean, you can easily find burials more than that, but you've also got to be close to water or be able to get to water.
00:25:38.780Yeah, yeah, it's mainly appeals to people who are ocean lovers, and the deceased family member was an ocean lover or loved the sea, and that's very appropriate.
00:25:49.100And the family can visit the site by boat.
00:25:53.800And dive, and place memorials on the reef.
00:25:57.740And so it's fairly, it has a sort of niche, it's a niche market.
00:26:06.040I can definitely see the arguments against it from people who are committed to saving reefs, and that is that, well, you're going to disturb the reef, and a reef is a very gentle and at-risk ecosystem.
00:26:22.980And so, if it became popular, I could see it becoming an environmental problem pretty quickly.
00:26:30.340It hasn't become an environmental problem, apparently, from what I've read, and the people I've talked to, they are very careful not to disturb the environment, the ocean environment, and the creatures in the ocean.
00:26:47.360And that's part of the conditions of doing reef burial.
00:26:55.080So it's not a real concern about disturbing the environment.
00:27:01.480So in this case, you would be cremated and then put out to sea?
00:27:04.840Well, yes, these artificial reefs have pods, cement, concrete pods, that the body is located in.
00:27:19.120And that's why they're called burial reefs.
00:28:02.500Well, the freeze-drying in liquid nitrogen, and then the body is reduced to natural basics.
00:28:17.820And similar to cremation, the remaining portions of the body can be returned to the family.
00:28:32.640But it's run into some controversies in Sweden, where it was first developed.
00:28:39.000It was, it originally was tested with bodies of pigs, which are similar in their anatomy to humans.
00:28:52.820And that seemed to work, but there's been a lot of controversy about bodies being stored for something like five years or 10 years, and not properly being disposed of.
00:29:10.660And they, it caused a huge controversy in Sweden.
00:29:16.100And so it was eventually, the Swedish tax agency announced that the method was not realistic.
00:29:23.060So that's pretty well been abandoned, although the developer's husband, Susan Wayne Mossack's husband, is still trying to raise money.
00:29:39.660But as I said, you know, those ads that you and I would have heard on radio, you know, this is not sound as warm and cuddly as Hulse Playfair and McGarry.
00:31:33.600So which, which of the alternative methods that you've looked at, we've discussed, uh, I think four of them now, let's talk about SpaceX quickly.
00:31:41.380And then I'll, I'll ask you what I was going to ask, um, uh, SpaceX as we're recording today, and this is, uh, April 20th in the afternoon, uh, SpaceX, uh, sent a rocket up into, uh, the sky and it blew up over Texas.
00:31:54.560So, I mean, that's one way to dispose of bodies, I suppose.
00:31:58.060Thankfully, nobody was on that, but, um, is if you're trying to think of environmentally friendly ways, you couldn't be doing this one person at a time.
00:32:09.420You'd have to be sending up pods of, uh, of people at once and, and letting them loose into the, uh, uh, the, the external atmosphere, I suppose.
00:32:21.260Well, again, uh, we're, we're only talking about parts of bodies, like, uh, uh, bodies that have all been, already been cremated of being sent out, uh, little bits of them, uh, a portion of them to astro, uh, NASA astronauts, their bodies were sent or pieces of them.
00:32:42.280That's hardly, that's hardly, we aren't going to expect bodies floating around in, in, uh, the, uh, uh, stratosphere.
00:33:24.320Uh, but there, um, yes, there's two or three.
00:33:27.780Um, one is, uh, one that got a lot, a lot of publicity in Washington State, for instance.
00:33:33.940It's called composting, or natural organ reduction, where the body is placed in a, uh, uh, a, uh, container and with wood chips and, uh, and water and heated.
00:33:50.160And it's reduced, over a period of time, to the basic, the basic, uh, elements of the human body.
00:33:57.180And there's hardly anything left but, but the teeth and bones.
00:34:02.420Um, that got a lot of publicity three or four years ago.
00:34:07.100And now, I think three companies in Washington State are doing it.
00:34:11.560Uh, one company in California is, and in Colorado.
00:34:15.880So, but it hasn't really taken off beyond that.
00:34:19.840And, um, and there are some who aren't, aren't very supportive of it, are very critical of the method.
00:34:26.680Um, and it also costs like $700 per, $7,000 per body.
00:34:37.000One company that's best known, they charge $7,000 to a disposable body.
00:34:41.620Um, there's recently been a young man in the Netherlands who's developed a mycelium coffin.
00:34:51.040Um, which he's marketing and is, he's, he's, um, has a large, uh, factory that's turning up mycelium coffins, which is basically a mushroom.
00:35:04.780Um, and the body is placed in the coffin, casket, and a bed of, of, of, uh, uh, uh, uh, mushrooms.
00:35:12.620And it, after a few weeks, it is pretty well gone, which is similar to natural organic result reduction or composting.
00:35:23.400Um, but it's, it's, uh, it, it's not expensive.
00:35:32.140Um, and then the, the, uh, the third that is taking, getting a lot of attention is called alkaline hydrolysis, which is dissolving the body in a mixture of lye and water and heat with heat.
00:35:50.080Um, and, um, that's been, uh, become more popular in the United States.
00:35:57.540Twenty-five states have approved it, have made it, have legalized it.
00:36:01.360It was used by Reverend, uh, Desmond Tutu for his, when he was, when he passed away in December, I think, of 20, 2021.
00:36:11.740His funeral was in January of last year, and, and he, he used that method because he was an, an environmental activist.
00:36:23.080And, um, and, uh, and people who are involved in that, um, alternative method think this may, may, has created a lot more interest since, uh, Reverend Tutu's death.
00:36:36.800Um, again, that involves, it's, it's, it's also the, the cremation society of America considers it just another form of cremation, actually, except no, no flame is involved.
00:36:50.100Uh, the body is heated in, in lye and water, and, uh, you end up with, uh, uh, just the bones, which are crushed.
00:36:59.880Uh, you have to remove any metallic parts, like, uh, titanium, uh, limbs, uh, or, um, um, um, anything metal, because it would damage the, uh, the, uh, grinding machine.
00:37:17.520But it, it's, it's, it's starting to take off in the States.
00:37:21.240It, in Canada, only three provinces, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and, and Quebec are using it, have approved it, um, and, and still only a couple of relatively small municipalities where it, where it's happening, which, which concerns me.
00:37:43.760Because Canada seems to be falling behind, um, in this, in this, uh, challenge of finding local, uh, finding methods of disposition of bodies.
00:37:54.980Uh, it's, it has very few green cemeteries compared to the United States, um, and, or, or the, or the UK.
00:38:04.440And, um, um, these methods using alternative methods, um, are also not, not, uh, getting approval or not becoming any more popular in Canada for some reason.
00:38:40.600There's tradition, history, family ties to how and why we do things.
00:38:46.140And then on, on top of that, you've got, um, I think in a couple of different chapters, you talk about the, uh, the power of the, the funeral home lobby of the, uh, the size and the strength of the industry.
00:39:00.140And those two factors would be, would weigh heavy on politicians, wouldn't they?
00:39:05.320Um, yes, but I, I don't think like there's the, there's the funeral giants like SCI, uh, corporation.
00:39:13.480That's one of the huge, it's a multi-billion dollar company that owns funeral homes in, in Canada and North and United States and Britain.
00:39:26.480It isn't, uh, outwardly resistant to some of these alternatives.
00:39:31.100Um, there's no indication that they've undertaken any of them, but they haven't expressed any lack of interest in these alternatives.
00:39:40.120Um, where the problem has risen largely is, uh, and I, I, I take it you're a Catholic.
00:39:48.140Uh, okay, uh, I, I have many Catholic friends and, and many, many Catholics who are, there's one Franciscan nun who has spoken in favor of this alkaline hydrolysis method is very acceptable.
00:40:06.960But Catholic bishops in, I think, three or four United, U.S. States have opposed it because they say it's, is disrespectful to the, to the remains, as opposed to cremation, which was approved by Pius the fourth, or Pius the sixth, sorry, back in 1960s.
00:40:26.320Um, and that method was okay with, was okay with, uh, with the Catholic Church.
00:40:33.960Uh, but the cremation society, cremation association regards this new method as, uh, as very similar as just cremation without, without burning, which.
00:40:49.080So, so there's cultural reasons, religious reasons that might be holding some of this back.
00:40:56.740Yes, there are, yes, um, cultural reasons.
00:41:02.300Um, most of the opposition has come from religion, um, not, most, most of it from the Catholic Church, the Catholic bishops, uh, although the Vatican had, I don't think has ruled on it, but, um, this, uh, Franciscan nun has spoken out, has written a report on it that's, that's supportive of the idea.
00:41:25.460Um, so, uh, do you, do you think it'll take us a long time to, to change our, our views on this?
00:41:34.620Uh, it's, it's taken a long time to get to the point where our burial rituals are what they are.
00:41:54.340Uh, we better, we better hurry up and make some of these decisions.
00:41:58.880Um, the, the funeral industry itself, although it's, it's open to most of these alternatives.
00:42:04.680Um, but public, public policy makers, uh, need to consider it because with the, the millions of baby boomers in the States and, and in Canada, which are obviously smaller numbers in Canada, but they're still in the millions, 16 million over the next 40 or 50 or 60 years will be gone.
00:42:29.900Well, as, as Carlton Basmajian, as a university professor from Iowa state says, it's going to take a crisis or a catastrophe before people start paying attention.
00:42:43.540Now, that seems par for the course from my decades of covering politics.
00:43:11.120Ian, you've, uh, you've written a book that is, uh, informative, eyeopening, uh, challenging, and, um, you did succeed in your, your quest to make it humorous.
00:43:20.380So I found myself laughing and chuckling.
00:43:23.240So I tried not to, uh, let the morbid, uh, nature of the subject, uh, dominate the book.
00:43:31.560Well, if people are interested in alternative ways and not just shooting a body up into space or cremated remains up into space, uh, via SpaceX, do check out the big exit by Ian Sutton.