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Flameless Cremation: A Change for the Better with Ed Gazvoda
2 Plays3 years ago
Ever heard of flameless cremation? If you haven’t yet, it’s about time you did! Welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper Podcast, where host Jennifer talks about life, love, loss, and funerals.
Today’s special guest is Ed Gazvoda, president of Fireless Cremation and co-inventor of aquamation 2.0 for humans, pets and labs. In this intriguing episode, Ed gives us an overview of fireless cremation–what it is and all the processes involved. Delve into a real eye-opener as Ed takes us on a deep dive into the science of alkaline hydrolysis and some of the legalities involved in the process.
Curious to know how this form of cremation differs from the usual one you know? Hit the play button and jump right in!
LITTLE NUGGETS OF GOLD:
- A little background about Ed and how he started his business
- More information about alkaline hydrolysis and its legal bases
- The difference between fireless cremation and regular cremation
- All about fireless cremation and the processes involved
Connect with Ed Gazvoda:
Website: https://firelesscremation.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firelesscremationsystem
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firelesscremation/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FirelessC
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcQnOrAjj6dBiSOYxx4e1vQ
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/firelesscremation
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper:
Facebook Page - Muldowney Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Facebook Page - Rainbow Bridge Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/rainbowbridgememorialsdotcom
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials & @jennifermuldowney
Twitter - @TheGlamReaper
Email us here: glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Glam Reaper Podcast and Fireless Cremation
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi guys and welcome to the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:08
Speaker
I'm your host Jennifer Muldowney aka the Glam Reaper herself.
00:00:12
Speaker
Today on the show we have a subject that is near and dear to my heart which is the environment and we are talking about one of the latest forms of body disposition.
Ed's Role in the Death Care Business
00:00:24
Speaker
We are talking to Ed about fireless cremation.
00:00:29
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about you, Ed.
00:00:31
Speaker
Lovely to have you here.
00:00:33
Speaker
Welcome, welcome.
00:00:34
Speaker
And tell us, why are you here?
00:00:37
Speaker
Jennifer, I'm in the death care business.
00:00:40
Speaker
Kind of landed here.
00:00:42
Speaker
It's my death calling at this point.
00:00:44
Speaker
Lovely.
00:00:45
Speaker
My birthday's this week.
00:00:46
Speaker
I'll be 61.
00:00:48
Speaker
Happy birthday in advance.
00:00:49
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:50
Speaker
So I started starting businesses back.
00:00:54
Speaker
when I was in high school, but I started a company in college that went public.
00:00:58
Speaker
So I've been involved in reducing emissions through the air, uh, knocks and socks from major power plants.
00:01:04
Speaker
That company still traded on NASDAQ, uh, fuel tech and clean diesel technology.
00:01:10
Speaker
Um, I also built the largest green building here in Colorado.
00:01:15
Speaker
So it's a double lead platinum.
00:01:18
Speaker
I've been involved in reducing energy use and trying to clean up the environment, making people healthy for
Understanding Alkaline Hydrolysis
00:01:24
Speaker
decades.
00:01:24
Speaker
And I read about Resumation 10 years ago and tried to get the rights from Sandy Sullivan in the UK.
00:01:33
Speaker
And I was negotiating with him, but he gave the rights, as we all know, to Matthews Industries for the U.S. So he gave it to a company that's got 5,000 crematories around the world.
00:01:43
Speaker
And they had a very expensive system and I called them and wanted to work with them, but they told me to pound sand.
00:01:48
Speaker
Uh, so I did a patent search.
00:01:50
Speaker
So I've taken Pat and I went and found someone who had worked at WR square, which ironically is also where Sandy Sullivan work.
00:02:00
Speaker
So alkaline hydrolysis has his basis with these two professors in upstate New York.
00:02:05
Speaker
So that's kind of where it all originated.
00:02:09
Speaker
Uh, they were trying to get rid of some,
00:02:11
Speaker
Waskily wabbits that had been infected with radiation and they used to have to package them up in stainless steel barrels and ship them off to Nevada.
00:02:21
Speaker
And they figured out they could just flush them down the drain if they use alkaline hydrolysis.
00:02:27
Speaker
And that's the origin of where all this came from.
00:02:30
Speaker
Okay, so just to pause you right there, for anybody that doesn't know, resumation, alkaline hydrolysis, water cremation, biochremation, there's a lot of terms that float around to do with this specific thing.
00:02:44
Speaker
And essentially what it is, is disposition of a human body or any body, as you discussed about rabbits.
00:02:51
Speaker
So it's getting rid, disposition of a body using liquid water.
00:02:58
Speaker
We use chemicals, so you use alkali.
00:03:00
Speaker
It's a pH of 14.
00:03:02
Speaker
We have our own patent pending on a new chemical process, but we still use alkali, but we use an accelerant.
00:03:09
Speaker
So rather than taking 18 hours at low temperature, we only take about two hours.
00:03:15
Speaker
And then we also have a process where we bring the pH down from typically 10.2 is where they end up with resumation.
00:03:23
Speaker
down the neutral, which is seven.
00:03:25
Speaker
So you're actually useful for the earth.
00:03:27
Speaker
So we actually do, you know, fireless burials.
00:03:31
Speaker
We give back a hundred percent of the body, not just the bones.
00:03:34
Speaker
So you also get all the essence of the person too.
00:03:37
Speaker
Right.
00:03:38
Speaker
So again, just for anybody out there, uh, when regular cremation is what people mostly know about by the time this goes to air, maybe more people will know about resumation and alkaline hydrolysis and all the other
00:03:50
Speaker
Right now it's burial or cremation.
00:03:52
Speaker
Like when you go into a funeral home, it's typically burial or cremation.
00:03:55
Speaker
There are states that have opened up to water cremation or resumation or the other, but effectively it's kind of one of two options at the moment, right?
Environmental Impact of Cremation Methods
00:04:04
Speaker
Cremation, typically what you get back is just
00:04:08
Speaker
ground down bone.
00:04:09
Speaker
Now, there are people out there who have questions about whether the casket gets burned, whether it's resold, whether when they get it back, is it their loved one with a casket?
00:04:19
Speaker
We've kind of jumped a massive leap ahead as well, by the way.
00:04:22
Speaker
Just as effectively by being rebuffed by sort of Matthews and Sandy, effectively, you've just said, OK, stick a finger up, I'll go and do my own thing.
00:04:32
Speaker
And so you've come up with your own, what you consider better
00:04:35
Speaker
to resumation and alkaline hydrolysis and this kind of thing.
00:04:39
Speaker
So what is your, when you say you're better for the earth, talk to us about the difference between that and cremation.
00:04:45
Speaker
Let's forget about resumation for uno momento, just because I know a lot of people are still not familiar with it and it's not even legal in a whole lot of states.
00:04:54
Speaker
So talk about it in terms of what people know now.
00:04:58
Speaker
So, because you call it fireless cremation.
00:04:59
Speaker
So that's what people know right now is fired cremation.
00:05:03
Speaker
Right.
00:05:04
Speaker
So when you burn a body, you use petrochemicals.
00:05:06
Speaker
So typically it takes about 3 million BTUs, which is equivalent energy of 26 gallons of gasoline, to burn a body.
00:05:15
Speaker
So the body is a carbon-based life form.
00:05:18
Speaker
And to burn it, all the water and everything has to be evaporated.
00:05:22
Speaker
And it takes hours to reduce a body and fuel out of a smokestack about 50% of someone's bones.
00:05:29
Speaker
And these small particulates go out the smokestack, which is
00:05:33
Speaker
the sixth leading cause of death around the world.
00:05:36
Speaker
So we've got a process where we're doing a final disposition of the dead and releasing toxins, mercury furon.
00:05:44
Speaker
So you talked about, do they burn the casket?
00:05:46
Speaker
They don't like burning metal caskets, but I'll tell you when the bodies come in, they've got all kinds of mercury in their teeth, typically from amalgams.
00:05:54
Speaker
A lot of times there'll be plastic in with the body, you know, whether they have polyester clothes on, uh,
00:06:02
Speaker
And it's just a mess what comes out the smokestack.
00:06:04
Speaker
It's actually 50 times the safe limit of mercury comes out of an average smokestack.
00:06:11
Speaker
And no one does anything about it because the EPA doesn't consider humans waste.
00:06:15
Speaker
So they actually have these small afterburners on the top of crematories that break the particles that are coming out.
00:06:23
Speaker
So you don't see the flesh coming out and the bones coming out.
00:06:26
Speaker
It's really small.
00:06:27
Speaker
They're PM 2.5, which means they get into your body.
00:06:31
Speaker
They can go through your lungs and get into your blood and go into your brain.
00:06:35
Speaker
And that's where, you know, this neurotoxin, you know, of things like mercury is very harmful.
00:06:41
Speaker
And what people don't know is when you get back the bones, you talked about how they're, they rank them out.
00:06:47
Speaker
They're on fire.
00:06:48
Speaker
It takes about two hours for them to cool.
00:06:50
Speaker
Then they're going to remove all the implants that they can find metal and screws because they want to ruin what they call kind of a premulator, something that actually grinds up bones.
00:07:00
Speaker
So typically when they rake them out, you can't get, you get by law, you have to just get the preponderance of bones out.
00:07:06
Speaker
And that oven is 1600 to 1900 degrees.
00:07:09
Speaker
And typically if you're a funeral home, you've got another body you want to put in there, or if you're a trade work crematory.
00:07:15
Speaker
And they only rebrick these things every 2000 bodies.
00:07:18
Speaker
So if you think about it, when you get your earned back, it's full of commingled cremates.
00:07:22
Speaker
So there's other people's bones in there with whoever else was cremated before you.
00:07:30
Speaker
So that's just the way it works.
00:07:31
Speaker
So it's just not a very good process for the earth.
00:07:33
Speaker
And it releases, I mean, there's different studies.
00:07:36
Speaker
I think the best I've seen is 540 pounds of carbon dioxide per cremation.
00:07:42
Speaker
Whereas we use electric heat.
00:07:45
Speaker
and we use about 40 kilowatts, which is equivalent of about 36 pounds of CO2 admitted to heat our vessel.
00:07:53
Speaker
So we use way less than even about 5% of what crematories do to burn a body.
00:08:00
Speaker
In terms of energy you're saving on the input, what about the output?
00:08:04
Speaker
Does your unit have any output?
00:08:06
Speaker
Does it have any chimney stack?
00:08:08
Speaker
What's the MO on that?
00:08:09
Speaker
Does it have any output, anything at all?
00:08:12
Speaker
There's water vapors, so we do
00:08:14
Speaker
heat the vessel to about 190 degrees.
00:08:17
Speaker
There is some low VOCs that come out, volatile organic compounds, and it's minimal.
00:08:25
Speaker
We don't burn any of the clothing and we don't even burn a viscera bag.
00:08:29
Speaker
We actually take the viscera bag out.
00:08:31
Speaker
So that's what, when they use an autopsy, you end up with a big plastic bag in your gut full of your viscerals.
00:08:38
Speaker
And, um,
00:08:39
Speaker
Typically that's burned.
00:08:40
Speaker
And so anytime you burn plastic, as you know, you get ferrons and dioxins going up into the air, which means everybody in that radius of that's, uh, Prematory is breathing in that that was just burned.
00:08:53
Speaker
I mean, it's, it's pretty bad.
00:08:54
Speaker
So, and then the other differences in our vessel, as opposed to, let's say, resume, Asians or viral response, all of those, when you're, when you're done with offline hydrolysis, typically anywhere from a third
00:09:08
Speaker
We've had three times as much sandy bones, tiny bones that are the size of salt that would typically just go down the drain.
00:09:16
Speaker
So we're giving back more of the person, 100% of their bone material back to the family.
00:09:23
Speaker
So typically people need two urns.
00:09:25
Speaker
I mean, it's a massive amount of bones you get back and it just surprises people and they're white and they're beautiful and they don't contain any, they're not oily and, you know, charred.
00:09:36
Speaker
like they would be.
00:09:37
Speaker
So how does that work?
00:09:39
Speaker
How do you give people twice as much back versus the crematorium?
00:09:45
Speaker
Is that because half of them have gone up in smoke?
00:09:48
Speaker
Is that?
00:09:49
Speaker
The bones are just on fire.
00:09:52
Speaker
I mean, even when they rake them out, they're in a stainless steel container.
00:09:55
Speaker
And like I said, it takes about two hours for them to stop burning once they even rake them out.
00:10:00
Speaker
But during that process, you've got to
00:10:03
Speaker
You want sterile bones.
00:10:04
Speaker
And so they get into the marrow and the inside of the bones.
00:10:07
Speaker
You pretty much have to cook them till they're cracked and they're broken apart.
00:10:11
Speaker
Think about leaving a chicken thigh on the, or chicken leg on this grill until there's nothing left.
00:10:18
Speaker
You know, it just kind of breaks apart and it's all, there's no flesh or anything.
00:10:22
Speaker
That's what happens in a crematory.
00:10:24
Speaker
It's just something's left inside an oven until there's nothing left really.
00:10:28
Speaker
And a lot of the bones go up in the air.
00:10:30
Speaker
We are talking very basic here and obviously, you know, this will be a difficult episode for anybody who has lost somebody and maybe gotten them cremated and everything like that.
00:10:39
Speaker
There's no funeral director tells, they don't typically tell you what happened.
00:10:43
Speaker
There's two sides to that.
00:10:45
Speaker
There's one where should we be completely transparent in all and in everything?
00:10:50
Speaker
Honestly, as somebody who deals with grieving people on a daily basis, there are people who are prepared for that, people who want that transparency and there are people that absolutely do not.
00:10:59
Speaker
It's a very difficult conversation to broach with people.
00:11:03
Speaker
You know, do you know what really happens inside a cremulator?
00:11:07
Speaker
There is a sort of naivete attached, I think, to Joe Public in terms of what happens with burial and cremation.
00:11:13
Speaker
You know, even people that are talking about eco burials and things like that.
00:11:17
Speaker
It is there's a lot that people don't know.
00:11:20
Speaker
And the carcinogenic drugs that we pump into our bodies towards the end of our lives are
00:11:25
Speaker
all that has to go up somewhere, whether it's back into the ground if you've gone for burial or whether it's up as chimney smoke, chimney stack.
00:11:32
Speaker
So you call yourself fireless cremation and yet you've referred to burning quite a lot in your description of what happens.
00:11:40
Speaker
So talk to me a bit about that.
What Families Receive After Fireless Cremation
00:11:43
Speaker
It's a dissolution as opposed to a burning.
00:11:46
Speaker
So fireless, we're not using petrochemicals, we're using
00:11:49
Speaker
chemicals which actually return nutrients to the earth.
00:11:52
Speaker
So we talked about already how you get twice as much bone matter back, but you also get all the essence.
00:11:58
Speaker
So when you look at a person, they're not just a skeleton inside, which is maybe eight to 12% of their total body mass.
00:12:06
Speaker
Uh, but there's all the rest of them.
00:12:07
Speaker
And what we do is, you know, for about every a hundred pounds, we only use 12 gallons of water where someone like Resumation or by response, their processes typically take about 300 gallons.
00:12:19
Speaker
So one of the reasons people don't really like other alkaline hydrolysis is everything goes down the sewer right at the end.
00:12:26
Speaker
Nobody wants to flush granny down the toilet.
00:12:30
Speaker
That's not to say I'm against reservation, but that's the... Well, I mean, I think it's better than petrochemical cremation, but it'd be really nice if you could take granny, you know, not have to breathe her because someone burned her and not have to put her down the sewer, which people don't see as dignified.
00:12:47
Speaker
So I sold the very first system of a funeral director 10 years ago.
00:12:51
Speaker
I had a company called Cycle of Life, but I've got a new process now.
00:12:55
Speaker
What happens is all that material in your body, all this beautiful, rich, nutrient, organic material is returned to the earth.
00:13:03
Speaker
So in our process, nothing goes down the sewer.
00:13:05
Speaker
In fact, most people take 25 gallons of the essence, twice as much bones back and hurry it.
00:13:12
Speaker
They take it up to the mountains, they put it in their backyard,
00:13:15
Speaker
And that way they don't need a casket and they don't need a cemetery to do burials.
00:13:19
Speaker
So we actually provide people a burial and if they don't want that essence, which is really a plant biostimulant, it's a fertilizer.
00:13:26
Speaker
Because the chemicals we use actually add nutrients in your body.
00:13:30
Speaker
We make you better off dead than you are alive for the earth, right?
00:13:34
Speaker
Wow.
00:13:35
Speaker
I mean, that's very impressive.
00:13:37
Speaker
When you keep referring to essence, is that liquid form?
00:13:39
Speaker
Is that powder form?
00:13:41
Speaker
It's liquid.
00:13:42
Speaker
Okay, so when somebody gets their loved one back, if I get granny back, for example, I'm going to get an urn of her ash and, if you like, an urn of her liquid.
Public Perception and Legal Status of Fireless Cremation
00:13:54
Speaker
Now, you'll get what we call plaskets.
00:13:56
Speaker
So they're caskets.
00:13:56
Speaker
So they're five-gallon plastic jugs.
00:13:59
Speaker
They're clear.
00:14:00
Speaker
Currently, they're white.
00:14:02
Speaker
And they have a handle.
00:14:04
Speaker
So typically, a 150-pound person, you'd get about 25 gallons of her essence back.
00:14:10
Speaker
So it'd be a liquid form.
00:14:12
Speaker
You can pour it right on the ground.
00:14:14
Speaker
You can dig a hole and pour it in and then put the dirt back on.
00:14:17
Speaker
But the idea is it actually adds nutrients to the top layer of the soil.
00:14:21
Speaker
Where in a burrow, someone's four feet under, even a green burrow, you got to bury them deep enough that the scavengers won't come dig them out.
00:14:28
Speaker
Right?
00:14:29
Speaker
So you got to be at least four feet under the ground.
00:14:32
Speaker
So with ours, you want to add nutrients to the top soil so you help the living.
00:14:37
Speaker
So you make plants and trees and everything more vital.
00:14:40
Speaker
If I take granny's essence and her remains and I get a pot and I put a rose bush seed into the pot, does granny absorb everything and turn into a rose bush or does she need other soil?
00:14:55
Speaker
Because that's the million dollar question on social media.
00:14:59
Speaker
Can I become a tree or can I become a rose bush?
00:15:02
Speaker
So, I mean, you do get absorbed.
00:15:04
Speaker
Your nutrients do get absorbed by whatever...
00:15:07
Speaker
slowly you've been putting into and whatever is growing on that your essence goes into it.
00:15:12
Speaker
So yes, you know, technically you become part of your essence becomes part of a tree, you know, is it you?
00:15:19
Speaker
There's no DNA left.
00:15:20
Speaker
So I mean, what really defines a human?
00:15:22
Speaker
Really, when you're done, you are chemicals, your nutrients for the earth, your, your potassium, your nitrogen, phosphorus, right, your water,
00:15:32
Speaker
And all that is returned to the earth.
00:15:34
Speaker
And that's how we used to be before they started burning people.
00:15:37
Speaker
You know, once there were enough people on the planet that someone died and you could just not avoid them for a while, you had to put them somewhere, right?
00:15:44
Speaker
They start to stink.
00:15:46
Speaker
They bring in scavengers.
00:15:47
Speaker
And so this is a great way to go back to the earth and actually be regenerative to the earth.
00:15:53
Speaker
Right.
00:15:53
Speaker
And take a plot of land forever, you know, and have all the resources to maintain that land.
00:16:00
Speaker
I mean, I figure if everyone on the earth died today, there'd be another 4% of the inhabitable world would be taken by graves if everyone were buried.
00:16:09
Speaker
You know, got a little 3 by 8 plot.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, burial is definitely not sustainable in its current format, for sure.
00:16:16
Speaker
It's just not.
00:16:17
Speaker
I mean, Asia, for example, is what, 99.9% cremation rate because...
00:16:23
Speaker
There's just no space with him.
00:16:24
Speaker
He just can't go anywhere.
00:16:26
Speaker
The rest of us will soon catch up.
00:16:28
Speaker
It's a fact.
00:16:30
Speaker
Now, tell me this.
00:16:31
Speaker
In terms of legality, you're obviously based in Denver.
00:16:34
Speaker
Are you legal in all the states in the world, countries in the world?
00:16:39
Speaker
Tell us about the legality of this.
00:16:41
Speaker
If we've got a funeral director who's like, this is for me, I want to talk to Ed.
00:16:45
Speaker
What's the crack with that?
00:16:47
Speaker
We fit in with alkaline hydrolysis.
00:16:50
Speaker
I continue to work on laws around the
00:16:52
Speaker
country and around the world.
00:16:54
Speaker
But I mean, wherever alkaline hydrolysis is legal currently, this is legal.
00:16:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:59
Speaker
Tell me how does that work for you?
00:17:01
Speaker
Because isn't alkaline hydrolysis very different to what you're doing?
00:17:05
Speaker
When they talk about alkaline hydrolysis, typically the laws are written and I've written some of the laws that are out there.
00:17:11
Speaker
Typically it refers to a chemical process.
00:17:14
Speaker
There's a few states where they actually refer to it as alkaline hydrolysis.
00:17:18
Speaker
And what that means is you just got to use either
00:17:20
Speaker
potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide and water to break the body down.
00:17:26
Speaker
And you do that anyway.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:28
Speaker
Now there's some people that are out there that are trying to make it high pressure, you know, saying only high pressure destroys the prions.
00:17:35
Speaker
These are DNA strands or protein strands that typically live in the brain.
00:17:41
Speaker
Things like mad cow, chronic wasting disease, avian bear flu, that kind of stuff.
00:17:45
Speaker
Stuff that
00:17:46
Speaker
is really hazardous and kills people.
00:17:48
Speaker
A lot of, they want to make sure that's destroyed.
00:17:51
Speaker
And there's been some recent studies, Ontario just made it legal to use low low temp because there's all these studies now that show that it destroys that.
00:18:01
Speaker
But there's these guys are trying to make high pressure the only way to go and the high pressure machines like, you know, they can cost 240,000 or more, right?
00:18:07
Speaker
Just for the machine.
00:18:10
Speaker
And the problem is they can explode.
00:18:12
Speaker
There's one that exploded recently up in Canada where the lid came off, the door came off and it went through the building and the body went out in the
Technologies in Alkaline Hydrolysis
00:18:20
Speaker
street.
00:18:20
Speaker
It was a bio response system.
00:18:22
Speaker
Oh yeah, the high pressure boiler is what they are.
00:18:25
Speaker
Ours is low temp.
00:18:26
Speaker
So ours is very safe and it destroys everything.
00:18:29
Speaker
So I would never get a high temp system, just one for the money.
00:18:32
Speaker
Two, it takes a lot longer than our process.
00:18:34
Speaker
So our process takes about two hours.
00:18:37
Speaker
Even those systems are taking four to six hours.
00:18:40
Speaker
So, again, just to break it down for everyone.
00:18:43
Speaker
So the high pressure, and this is what I, even as an industry professional, found very, very frustrating and confusing about alkaline hydrolysis, resumation slash water cremation, all the different terms, is there's so many different brand variations of it.
00:19:00
Speaker
And there's so many different variations of it.
00:19:02
Speaker
So when you're talking about high pressure, you're still talking about resumation, but a high pressure version of it.
00:19:07
Speaker
Well, there's Resumation and BioResponse Solutions is the one, their system's the one that exploded up in Canada.
00:19:13
Speaker
Okay, because this is where it's frustrating.
00:19:15
Speaker
And for a non-scientist person, it's frustrating because there's burial or there's cremation.
00:19:22
Speaker
This other option that uses chemicals, there just seems to be so many different variants to it.
00:19:29
Speaker
It's pretty simple.
00:19:31
Speaker
They all came from WR squared, which was waste by waste reduction, right?
00:19:35
Speaker
These two professors in upstate New York.
00:19:37
Speaker
There were medical professors with the radiated rabbits.
00:19:41
Speaker
So, Joe Wilson, who's with Bioresponse, and Sandy Sullivan, both were involved with WR-squared.
00:19:47
Speaker
They use basically the same chemical process.
00:19:50
Speaker
They have different machines.
00:19:51
Speaker
They use different ways of heating it, of stirring it.
00:19:54
Speaker
Machines look different.
00:19:55
Speaker
They have different price points.
00:19:57
Speaker
But it's the same chemical process.
00:19:59
Speaker
Water and sodium are potassium.
00:20:02
Speaker
What we did is when I sold that first system, we knew there were problems with it.
00:20:06
Speaker
You know, sometimes it would take 16, 18 hours at low temp.
00:20:10
Speaker
And the way that's set up is the skull wasn't getting done.
00:20:13
Speaker
So you had typically, you know, a brain left in the cranium, right?
00:20:17
Speaker
Because all the bones would get in the bottom of the basket.
00:20:20
Speaker
They're still having problems with that today.
00:20:23
Speaker
So, you know, I question whether the affluent is even sterile at that point.
00:20:27
Speaker
You know, if you still have tissue left.
00:20:29
Speaker
Ours looks more like a bathtub.
00:20:31
Speaker
and the body's in there and it rocks back and forth.
00:20:34
Speaker
And so at the end, there's no basket that comes out that drips everywhere, right?
00:20:40
Speaker
And our process takes two hours, not 18 hours at low temp.
00:20:44
Speaker
So we have a patent pending on the accelerant for it.
00:20:48
Speaker
And that actually makes it work.
00:20:50
Speaker
And we bring the payments down.
00:20:51
Speaker
So that's very different too.
00:20:53
Speaker
I'll never put anybody's body down the sewer.
00:20:56
Speaker
Well, yeah, well, and see, this is where I think I think there is going to be some confusion
Options for Families Post-Cremation
00:21:02
Speaker
with it in terms of if I was going into a funeral home and I don't know anything about this is one of the largest problems I think the funeral industry has is Joe Public is uneducated in this and doesn't want to be educated necessarily in all the stuff we talk about.
00:21:22
Speaker
And so they walk in and they have this third option.
00:21:25
Speaker
And they just they just say, oh, that's that.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, I'll do that.
00:21:29
Speaker
Now, I am in the funeral home and I've chosen this third option.
00:21:33
Speaker
It could be yours.
00:21:35
Speaker
It could be Sandy's.
00:21:36
Speaker
It could be I won't know.
00:21:37
Speaker
You know, I don't know.
00:21:38
Speaker
Or I could be thinking I'm choosing yours, but it could be Sandy's or the other guy.
00:21:44
Speaker
Like letting them know that, you know, there is different ways you can go down with alkaline hydrolysis.
00:21:50
Speaker
You can go down the sewer and go back to the earth.
00:21:52
Speaker
We're the only ones that currently return the body to the earth.
00:21:56
Speaker
No one else.
00:21:57
Speaker
I know that there's some veterinarians and some other people that have had put it back on the earth, but they're putting it back with all the fats and all the salts.
00:22:05
Speaker
So fats and salts aren't good for the earth.
00:22:08
Speaker
Our process at the end, we end up also with something called crystalline, which there's these beautiful crystals in their fats and salts.
00:22:16
Speaker
So that's why the essence, when you pour it out is just liquid.
00:22:21
Speaker
Otherwise, you'd have these formations of fat and salts, which actually kill plants.
00:22:26
Speaker
So you don't want that.
00:22:28
Speaker
And those crystals, are they something the family can keep?
00:22:30
Speaker
Are they something... I give it back if they want it.
00:22:33
Speaker
I tell them about it if they don't want it.
00:22:35
Speaker
We're trying to figure it out.
00:22:36
Speaker
Right now, I think it's got a very high fat content.
00:22:39
Speaker
So we're thinking it might be useful as a biodiesel if people don't want it.
00:22:44
Speaker
But there was a family about 300 yards from where I
00:22:47
Speaker
our facility is that actually did a burial.
00:22:49
Speaker
So they took all the crystalline and they buried it in the ground along with all the essence and the, and the bones of the wife and the mother.
00:22:58
Speaker
It was a beautiful way to go.
00:23:00
Speaker
I mean, they literally did a burial, you know, you know, the difference between the price point to be able to be buried environmentally through our process is a quarter of the cost.
00:23:12
Speaker
You know, our, you know, our process, we were charging $2,495 us.
00:23:18
Speaker
So we've been processing bodies or doing fireless cremation since August of 2019.
Business and Market Impact of Fireless Cremation
00:23:24
Speaker
So you're a year in business of actually selling these units?
00:23:30
Speaker
Well, we were just doing, we were perfecting the process.
00:23:33
Speaker
We're running our original system, but now we're selling systems.
00:23:36
Speaker
So we're manufacturing systems here in Colorado and selling them around the world.
00:23:41
Speaker
Okay, great.
00:23:42
Speaker
And is there any states or countries where there is a unit that you can...
00:23:48
Speaker
started manufacturing the new one.
00:23:50
Speaker
So the one that we have is the very first one of this version.
00:23:53
Speaker
The next ones will come out.
00:23:54
Speaker
There's five of them being developed and they'll be ready in 12 weeks from today.
00:24:00
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:01
Speaker
And are they going anywhere?
00:24:03
Speaker
We know where they're going.
00:24:05
Speaker
Some are still available.
00:24:06
Speaker
So if anybody wants one, I don't think anyone's going to die just to go in these, you know, be the first day.
00:24:11
Speaker
You don't know.
00:24:13
Speaker
People go for celebrity for lots of different reasons.
00:24:18
Speaker
I'm only from jumping the system you can.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah, you just don't know.
00:24:23
Speaker
The way you're doing it is manufacturing them and then selling them.
00:24:26
Speaker
Is it to crematoriums?
00:24:28
Speaker
Is it to funeral directors?
00:24:30
Speaker
Is this something that you can, like, because it's got no output, as in a chimney stack, could you put one of these units...
00:24:39
Speaker
on a penthouse building saying Trump Towers in New York City?
00:24:45
Speaker
I don't think I'd want to deal with the security ramp.
00:24:49
Speaker
Not right, Matt.
00:24:49
Speaker
For sure.
00:24:51
Speaker
These need to be, I mean, technically they could go in a retail location.
00:24:56
Speaker
I wouldn't want to put them, you know, there's zoning that dictates where these go.
00:25:00
Speaker
So by law, they're considered crematories.
00:25:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:25:03
Speaker
Even though they don't have admissions.
00:25:05
Speaker
No one's really said, okay, we're going to make a special zoning for
00:25:09
Speaker
alkaline hydrolysis and the reason is there's chemicals involved so the potassium hydroxide is a pH of 14. you wouldn't really want a chemical spill on the top floor of trump towers right no you definitely wouldn't not a chemical spill of the deceased for sure bodies coming in and out and so you know you got people crying and stuff so yeah i hope you'll see one of trump towers anytime soon
00:25:34
Speaker
It is typically you're selling to industry folk.
00:25:38
Speaker
You're selling to crematoriums, funeral directors.
00:25:42
Speaker
Mostly people that do trade work, you know, are typically people who buy these and then the funeral homes buy them.
00:25:48
Speaker
But then also there's all, you know, people like myself that, you know, didn't have a funeral home before I got into this, just read about it, thought about the environmental impact and decided to do something good for the world that'll do it.
00:25:59
Speaker
So I really think kind of like cremation grew out of a couple of used car salesmen out of
00:26:04
Speaker
California started the Neptune Society, you know, and really started, you know, pushing the funeral homes.
00:26:10
Speaker
I think there's an opportunity for entrepreneurs to set these up in cities and compete with the funeral homes too.
00:26:17
Speaker
Them's fighting words from the funeral community, Ed.
00:26:20
Speaker
We might have to put that in the... We might have to put that in the blooper.
00:26:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:29
Speaker
people what happened.
00:26:30
Speaker
But I mean, I mean, embalming, I wouldn't work with any funeral homes here in Denver that did embalming.
00:26:35
Speaker
But that's not because of the process.
00:26:38
Speaker
It's just because I think embalming is terrible for the environment.
00:26:41
Speaker
But you got to put, I mean, you got to draw a line in the sand somewhere and say, you know, what are you?
00:26:46
Speaker
Are you on the side of your survivors?
00:26:48
Speaker
Or are you just on something that's expedient, you know, because everyone else is getting cremated?
Ethics and Environmental Impact of Funeral Practices
00:26:53
Speaker
Or do you really look at it?
00:26:54
Speaker
And I think
00:26:55
Speaker
this kind of education you're putting on might make people think about what is their impact on their survivors.
00:27:01
Speaker
No one really wants to harm.
00:27:02
Speaker
Granny doesn't want to die in harm.
00:27:04
Speaker
I don't know if you're a granny, but... Mine are all gone, unfortunately.
00:27:08
Speaker
Right.
00:27:09
Speaker
Buried...
00:27:10
Speaker
In classic Ireland style buried as well, cremation wouldn't have even been... God, Lord, don't even consider cremation.
00:27:17
Speaker
So this would have definitely not... Wouldn't have worked.
00:27:21
Speaker
That would have been better than cremation for them because they could have been buried, but they could have been buried in a way where they could have nourished the beautiful...
00:27:29
Speaker
No, Ed, in Ireland, it's a religious thing.
00:27:32
Speaker
I mean, cremation itself only became something, an option in Ireland.
00:27:37
Speaker
Like, so you've got the whole Catholic thing.
00:27:39
Speaker
I mean, I have a cremation jewellery line.
00:27:42
Speaker
That's something that I started 10 years ago.
00:27:45
Speaker
And even that gets the odd sort of, it's disgraceful what you're doing, because there are some steadfast Catholics who believe that the body should remain intact.
00:27:57
Speaker
entirely so cremation but it's listen that's a whole other podcast because you know the fact that cremation is now allowed all of a sudden and now promoted because we're running out of body space and because the church can make money from it fast forward another 20 years and there'll be all sorts of options money there's a lot of people who don't want to burn twice so what i do with them in ours is we don't burn we just it's we mix the ashes with the glass we we're not the diamond people
00:28:26
Speaker
we're lower lower lower than that we're lower priced than that we don't you know with the carbon again the diamonds i mean that's that's a whole other people like relics so i mean when you're giving back your jewelry you know that's something they keep and it's a keepsake but no one thinks where did the body go when it was spewed out the smokestack so 98 percent of the body gets spewed out the smokestack where did you say granny go yeah granny go she's someone's breathing her right or she's
00:28:55
Speaker
coming back to the earth, you know, whatever was in her teeth and her implants.
00:29:00
Speaker
When we're done, all the implants are sterile and I donate them.
00:29:04
Speaker
They get reused.
00:29:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:06
Speaker
That's good.
00:29:07
Speaker
That's good.
00:29:08
Speaker
So they're not getting burned.
00:29:09
Speaker
So, you know, in a typical crematory, a lot of the implants comes out charred and it's destroyed.
00:29:16
Speaker
With ours, any of these implants, very expensive parts can get reused.
00:29:20
Speaker
It's a big difference.
00:29:21
Speaker
Is it fireless cremation?
00:29:22
Speaker
Is that what you're going under?
00:29:24
Speaker
We're going to go under fireless cremation for the systems, yes.
00:29:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:28
Speaker
What's the future for fireless cremations?
00:29:30
Speaker
Well, we've got a very competitive product, right?
00:29:33
Speaker
So there's people looking at alternatives to petrochemical cremation and burial.
00:29:39
Speaker
You've got green burial.
00:29:41
Speaker
I think what we've got is a price point.
00:29:43
Speaker
We're selling these for $125,000 US.
00:29:45
Speaker
We've got the lowest price point, and that's
00:29:48
Speaker
not done because we were not maximizing profit.
00:29:51
Speaker
What we're trying to do is have a bigger impact on reducing carbon.
00:29:54
Speaker
You know, we talk, talk about the carbon dioxide and all the pollutants.
00:29:58
Speaker
If I can make this competitive with a crematory price wise, why would anyone buy another petrochemical cremation?
00:30:06
Speaker
So, you know, anybody who owns a stock and some of these crematory companies, I mean, you might want to keep an eye on, you know, some of the Matthew industries of the world.
00:30:15
Speaker
I don't know how they're going to compete.
00:30:17
Speaker
Um,
00:30:18
Speaker
I think every funeral home should have start offering this.
00:30:21
Speaker
You know, it's typically most funeral homes don't have their own crematories.
00:30:25
Speaker
And it's just because of the overhead.
00:30:27
Speaker
And plus, it's become a commodity to burn a body.
00:30:29
Speaker
So you just you ship it out to a third party person, pay them a couple hundred bucks and you don't have to deal with it.
00:30:35
Speaker
And then all these people who work in these crematories have to get tested for mercury every year, at least here in Colorado.
00:30:41
Speaker
They're tested.
00:30:42
Speaker
So everyone knows there's environmental issues with cremations.
00:30:47
Speaker
And even people who have crematories are looking at this as an option.
00:30:51
Speaker
So I think if, you know, once they see our process and it takes a couple hours, it's clean, they can offer a new service, a new burial that doesn't involve a cemetery and a casket.
00:31:03
Speaker
You tell me, I mean, when I look at it, I see a very rosy future for the world and for our business, you know, with alkaline hydrolysis 2.0.
00:31:11
Speaker
I don't know how else anyone would want to go.
00:31:13
Speaker
Why would you want to be burned when you could be returned to the earth?
00:31:16
Speaker
Which you talk about from a biblical standpoint, that's kind of what people want, you know, not ashes to ashes.
00:31:23
Speaker
Really?
00:31:25
Speaker
You know, greener patches.
00:31:27
Speaker
We'd have to change that graveside reading then to what would we be turning to ashes to essence and bone or I don't know.
00:31:39
Speaker
I love the idea.
00:31:40
Speaker
I love the rose tinted glasses look of the world, Ed, because I do that myself and I do hope and pray for a better world.
00:31:47
Speaker
I do think innovations like this in the industry are massively important.
00:31:51
Speaker
And that's part of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast, because for the last 10 years, I have talked and met the most interesting people.
00:32:00
Speaker
And I didn't have a funeral background.
00:32:02
Speaker
I do now.
00:32:04
Speaker
But I feel like there's still so much...
00:32:07
Speaker
that the public don't know and want to know.
00:32:09
Speaker
I get asked such fascinating questions as I'm sure you probably do.
00:32:13
Speaker
I mean, I know you pitched, you were in some fundraising competition and you won, I think, right?
00:32:19
Speaker
Yeah, there was 150 companies competed and it was a $100,000 pitch competition.
00:32:25
Speaker
I had some fun.
00:32:26
Speaker
You know, I talked about, you know, what really happens during cremation in our process.
00:32:31
Speaker
And, you know, if you tell people the truth and it resonates with them, clearly it did in that competition.
00:32:37
Speaker
I just think people should be more transparent.
00:32:39
Speaker
I don't think, I think people can deal with it.
00:32:41
Speaker
You talk about people are grieving when I, when I bring people in, I don't do any dressing of any bodies for visitation.
00:32:48
Speaker
I just pull them out.
00:32:49
Speaker
Even if they've been autopsy on a gurney and tell them they're going to look dead.
00:32:52
Speaker
Their eyes are going to be sunken in a little, their cheeks going to be in.
00:32:55
Speaker
We don't put any makeup on them, maybe wipe the blood off.
00:32:58
Speaker
Right.
00:32:59
Speaker
And they look dead and that helps with the grieving process.
00:33:01
Speaker
And you know, I'm a psych major from Harvard.
00:33:04
Speaker
So, you know, I,
00:33:06
Speaker
I look at this and I watch the people's reaction compared to somebody in a coffin that's been filled with formalin, formaldehyde, which is a known carcinogen.
00:33:16
Speaker
And even funeral directors don't like doing that anymore.
00:33:18
Speaker
They outsource that too, because they know the person who's doing it probably is going to die of some weird cancer.
00:33:23
Speaker
I mean, obviously funeral directors have very odd cancers that most of us don't get, or most people don't get.
00:33:30
Speaker
But anyway, the whole death and dying process is just very normal.
00:33:34
Speaker
And to,
00:33:36
Speaker
take it and make it into a circus doesn't make any sense to us.
Personal Experiences and Industry Insights
00:33:40
Speaker
I mean, I can see Reverend body care, you know, where you're cleaning a body and yourself.
00:33:44
Speaker
I like home funerals.
00:33:45
Speaker
Um, when my mother died, I put her in a, um, a cooler, you know, a freezer, cause she was going to Arlington cemetery.
00:33:53
Speaker
Uh, and it's four to six months before she would go with her husband who was in Vietnam and anywhere.
00:33:59
Speaker
She wanted to be with him and they didn't have alkaline hydrolysis in Maryland.
00:34:04
Speaker
So the funeral directors all went in Balmer because she would have been in a pool for 26 months.
00:34:08
Speaker
And I said, no, I just bought a freezer in a friend's basement and took care of myself.
00:34:14
Speaker
But people don't think outside of the box.
00:34:16
Speaker
They go in, they're grieving, you know, even with pre-me, you know, these big companies, which now I'm selling to, right?
00:34:23
Speaker
Like the SEIs in the world.
00:34:25
Speaker
I'd love for them to change their behavior.
00:34:27
Speaker
But there's a lot of money in embalming.
00:34:29
Speaker
There's a lot of money in selling caskets, right?
00:34:31
Speaker
There's a lot of money in selling prayer cards.
00:34:33
Speaker
You just go on, you know, the limos, all that's unnecessary to be returned to the earth.
00:34:39
Speaker
It's like I keep saying on this podcast, it is a business.
00:34:43
Speaker
It is an industry.
00:34:44
Speaker
And I know people are allergic to that word because it sounds awful, but I'm like, people make money from it.
00:34:50
Speaker
So it is an industry.
00:34:52
Speaker
There's inputs, there's outputs, there's profits.
00:34:54
Speaker
It's a business.
00:34:55
Speaker
It's an industry.
00:34:56
Speaker
You shouldn't feel like you have to do it.
00:34:58
Speaker
And people don't know there's these options.
00:35:00
Speaker
So there's,
00:35:01
Speaker
There's various groups that try to help people work through it.
00:35:05
Speaker
And I think if someone wants to spend a lot of money on a funeral, so be it.
00:35:10
Speaker
You want a casket that's supposedly going to last 100 years?
00:35:13
Speaker
Go for it.
00:35:14
Speaker
You want to be buried on the top of Mount Sinai?
00:35:16
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:35:17
Speaker
Pay a million bucks to be next to a famous person at Fairmont or something, right?
00:35:25
Speaker
It's just amazing.
00:35:26
Speaker
Well, just on that, actually, I mean, Michael Jackson's 24 karat gold casket that he had.
Practical Considerations of Fireless Cremation Units
00:35:35
Speaker
Like what happens to the casket?
00:35:37
Speaker
Like what's the is there a casket involved in your process?
00:35:41
Speaker
What's the price for your process versus cremation for Joe Public?
00:35:46
Speaker
And do they purchase a special casket?
00:35:49
Speaker
Do is it can they buy a regular one?
00:35:52
Speaker
Do they rent one?
00:35:53
Speaker
What's the situation with that?
00:35:55
Speaker
We don't sell any caskets.
00:35:57
Speaker
We sell no goods or services.
00:35:58
Speaker
So when I was done, um, sustainable funeral before I just started on fireless cremation, our price list only included one option, which was the, you know, fireless cremation.
00:36:09
Speaker
We sold no goods or services.
00:36:11
Speaker
The body came back.
00:36:12
Speaker
The bones came back in a cotton bag tied with jute strength and the casket, we call them plaskets because they're five gallon plastic jugs, right?
00:36:21
Speaker
So the essence in those and five gallons is
00:36:24
Speaker
a little over 40 pounds.
00:36:25
Speaker
So we ended up giving people four or five or even six five gallon containers to take back with them.
00:36:34
Speaker
And we don't charge for that.
00:36:35
Speaker
We ask them to return it so we can reuse them.
00:36:38
Speaker
And if they lived far away, they could recycle them.
00:36:41
Speaker
But you could actually ship a body that way from, let's say, Denver to Florida for $160.
00:36:47
Speaker
Now, you tell me what it would cost to ship a body air freight from Denver to Florida.
00:36:53
Speaker
It might be at least $3,000.
00:36:55
Speaker
If you don't have to drop them off, you need the air freight, pay to be picked up at the airport.
00:37:00
Speaker
This way here, we just ship your plasticids and your bones to wherever you want to be, you know, final wrestling place, right?
00:37:08
Speaker
Right.
00:37:09
Speaker
So, effectively, granny goes on to a place or a tray of some form.
00:37:16
Speaker
and goes into your unit.
00:37:17
Speaker
How large is your unit?
00:37:19
Speaker
Will it fit in regular crematoriums?
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:23
Speaker
So it's about seven feet by three feet wide all in.
00:37:30
Speaker
So, and it'll hold a 500 pound decedent.
00:37:33
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:34
Speaker
And one at a time?
00:37:35
Speaker
We only do one at a time.
00:37:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:37
Speaker
They come in on a gurney and then the new one's designed with a mortuary lift.
00:37:42
Speaker
So the body goes in, it's dropped into this, you know, basically a spa, you know, into a tub.
00:37:48
Speaker
Um, and then it closes the lid.
00:37:51
Speaker
And then when it's done, all the essence is pumped until we call it an essence fill station where it sits.
00:37:57
Speaker
And that's where the crystalline form.
00:37:59
Speaker
They come out.
00:38:00
Speaker
Then the plastic gets, gets filled with the essence and all the bones are the small, Sandy bones are collected in a, in a grid collector, the great collector.
00:38:09
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:38:10
Speaker
collects all the sandy bones the big bones are still inside the vessel so the field director would take the skull on the femur and the tibula whatever other big bones are left in there and remove those and then they have to dry and then they go on a cremulator like you know you know something that breaks the bones up yeah okay so you still use the cremulator to grind the bones yeah typically like i said you know anywhere from typically a third to
00:38:36
Speaker
Just depends on the body.
00:38:37
Speaker
Some bodies, their bones just break apart.
00:38:40
Speaker
I don't know if they've got, you know, the collagen is gone or what, but we've had people where four times as much of their bigger bones is standing bones.
00:38:48
Speaker
So we weigh the bones right now because you know, there's a new process for, I mean, we've been doing it for over a year, right?
00:38:54
Speaker
This new chemical process from a scientific standpoint, figure out the best way to do it.
00:38:59
Speaker
And it's just very interesting to see people's bone density have an impact on how much Sandy bones
00:39:04
Speaker
on regular alkaline hydrolysis with going down the sewer.
00:39:07
Speaker
And that's a real problem.
00:39:09
Speaker
And I won't say the name, but there's people that have some of these other systems where they have to collect that sandy bone before it goes down the sewer and also get the fats out.
00:39:21
Speaker
They won't let it go down into the sanitary sewer system.
00:39:25
Speaker
It's not good for the waste treatment system.
00:39:28
Speaker
Yeah, I can imagine.
00:39:29
Speaker
So effectively you go into granny goes into a warm bath for a couple of hours.
00:39:37
Speaker
That's kind of a gentle way to put it.
00:39:39
Speaker
I mean, that's kind of what I do.
00:39:41
Speaker
I mean, basically he's going into a chemical bath that's going to break down her, her body.
00:39:48
Speaker
So, I mean, yeah, you hear people say it's a water commission in this bowl.
00:39:52
Speaker
It's not a water commission.
00:39:53
Speaker
You put a body in water and tell me how long it takes to break down.
00:39:56
Speaker
Right.
00:39:57
Speaker
If you put no heat and stuff.
00:39:59
Speaker
So, I mean,
00:39:59
Speaker
I hate the name water cremation personally, but because you really are using chemicals and the chemicals have a purpose.
00:40:07
Speaker
One is to break down the fats, which we do.
00:40:09
Speaker
The other one is to do a dissolution of all the proteins in the body and the tissue.
00:40:15
Speaker
And then you got to use another chemical if you want to bring it down to something that's good for the earth to bring the pH down.
00:40:21
Speaker
So it's really is instead of petrochemicals, it's actually chemicals that add value to the nutrients in your body.
00:40:27
Speaker
So at the end, like I said, you're more beneficial than, you know, if you died of exposure when you're hiking here in Colorado and scavengers got you.
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:36
Speaker
You're better off having your loved ones go up and pour you out in the mountains.
00:40:40
Speaker
You're adding more nutrients back to the earth.
00:40:42
Speaker
Right.
00:40:42
Speaker
Because that's what the chemicals do.
00:40:44
Speaker
They add nutrients.
00:40:45
Speaker
Right.
00:40:46
Speaker
You know, there's not.
00:40:48
Speaker
I mean, if you're a biologist, you would, you know, or grew stuff, a botanist, you would know how valuable, you know, the nutrients are in your body.
00:40:56
Speaker
So I can see the benefits of this for the funeral directors, but I can also see where they'll fight you on it because they're losing out on their casket sales and everything.
00:41:06
Speaker
It's definitely sounds like something that, as you said, somebody who's not even in the industry could purchase one of these units and in some ways go into head to head with the funeral directors because it's going to be a lot lower cost.
00:41:20
Speaker
What's the average cost or charge that a funeral director or other person would charge for this?
00:41:27
Speaker
I would say a realistic price is going to be somewhere around $2,000.
00:41:31
Speaker
I know some funeral homes are charging more than double that.
00:41:35
Speaker
People are paying it where it's at.
00:41:39
Speaker
But there's no casket.
00:41:41
Speaker
There's no embalming.
00:41:43
Speaker
There's no other charges.
00:41:45
Speaker
No.
00:41:45
Speaker
I mean, you can embalm if you want.
00:41:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:49
Speaker
It's just pointless.
00:41:50
Speaker
I don't know why a funeral director would want to embalm.
00:41:52
Speaker
I mean, it just makes no sense to put your own personal self at risk.
00:41:56
Speaker
Well, it's interesting because when you were describing, I'm personally not a fan of embalming.
00:42:00
Speaker
That's just for me.
00:42:02
Speaker
But when you were describing what you did or do for a family, I personally, I'd be very against that also.
00:42:10
Speaker
As in, that's just my own personal because I actually was talking quite recently on another podcast episode about how because I do what I do and I work in the business I work in,
00:42:21
Speaker
When my loved ones pass away, people assume I want to see them dead when we have wakes in Ireland and things like that.
00:42:29
Speaker
Now, they are typically embalmed.
00:42:31
Speaker
I don't.
00:42:32
Speaker
Usually, I don't want to see them because I want to remember them laughing.
00:42:36
Speaker
I want to remember them as they were.
00:42:37
Speaker
So, like what you described there, I find that, oh, that would be offensive to me because...
00:42:43
Speaker
Sometimes I think people do need closure.
00:42:46
Speaker
I definitely do.
00:42:47
Speaker
And there may be somebody I lose in my life that I will need that type of closure because I just won't believe it otherwise.
00:42:54
Speaker
But I don't think everybody is prepared mentally, emotionally, spiritually for seeing something like what you're talking about.
00:43:00
Speaker
And I do think there is benefits to embalming in some respect to the embalming and the makeup and all of that for people that want to see their loved one and have...
00:43:11
Speaker
you know, a moment with them.
00:43:13
Speaker
I don't agree with embalming from a chemical point of view.
00:43:16
Speaker
It's just adding more.
00:43:18
Speaker
I mean, people talk about how Coke and Diet Coke is bad for your body.
00:43:21
Speaker
I think, well, I mean, you're going to choose embalming when you die.
00:43:25
Speaker
So, you know, you're pumping all sorts of chemicals into you then.
00:43:28
Speaker
Yeah, I've just had bad experience as well myself with people I know and care about.
00:43:32
Speaker
I've walked in and I've seen them in coffins and caskets and they just didn't look like themselves as far as I was concerned.
00:43:38
Speaker
And I wish I'd never seen them that way because now my memory of them is distorted.
00:43:42
Speaker
I agree.
00:43:43
Speaker
It could be an individual thing, but I think seeing people look dead helps with the grieving process.
00:43:48
Speaker
That's been my experience.
00:43:49
Speaker
Most funeral directors wouldn't do that, partly because I think, one, you think it's more respectful to make their, you know, plump their skin up
00:43:58
Speaker
You can do it with makeup.
00:43:59
Speaker
You don't have to add formalin to pump up.
00:44:02
Speaker
Basically, you're just dealing with the face, typically, right?
00:44:05
Speaker
Or hands.
00:44:06
Speaker
So you can put makeup on it.
00:44:07
Speaker
You don't really need to put formalin and make someone look pink.
00:44:10
Speaker
I mean, I look plenty pink.
00:44:12
Speaker
Just put some rouge on me, right?
00:44:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:16
Speaker
I'm going to hold you to that, Ed.
00:44:19
Speaker
On your deathbed, I'll come over and I'll rouge you up.
00:44:24
Speaker
Exactly.
00:44:27
Speaker
But I would say seeing people that are dead look dead gets you past the point that, geez, you know, you accept the fact that that person looks dead.
00:44:36
Speaker
We should be used to seeing people looking dead, not looking like they're somehow asleep.
00:44:41
Speaker
That's my personal opinion, but I'll never change that.
00:44:44
Speaker
So I'm not fighting that problem.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely.
00:44:47
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:44:49
Speaker
And that's fine.
00:44:50
Speaker
That was absolutely amazing.
00:44:52
Speaker
Thank you so much for filling us in on everything.
00:44:56
Speaker
I'm sure I'll probably need to have a follow-up episode because I have a feeling there'll be a lot of questions, whether it's industry or other on that.
00:45:04
Speaker
We'll leave all your information below the podcast.
00:45:07
Speaker
So what do you think, guys?
00:45:14
Speaker
Would you get fireless cremation?
00:45:16
Speaker
Have it done to your loved one?
00:45:18
Speaker
Or would you choose it for yourself in a pre-plan?
00:45:21
Speaker
Let us know in the comments.
00:45:23
Speaker
Glamreaperpodcast at gmail.com That's Glamreaperpodcast at gmail.com We'll talk to you soon.