Eco-Coffins

View large image What's the solution to the backlog of the dead waiting to be cremated?

Increase turnover, or rather "burnover", with shoeboxes eco-coffins!

AP reports:

They're presentable, environmentally friendly and burn faster: cardboard "eco-coffins" may just be the solution to long queues at Hong Kong's busy crematoriums ...

Health officials want to introduce the green coffins - made of corrugated cardboard and said to speed up the cremation process from two and a half hours to an hour - to alleviate traffic at crematoriums ...

"With less time required for each session, we can arrange more sessions per day to cut queuing time for cremation ... That in turn will help ease the demand on our public mortuary."

It's true: Hong Kongers have to queue for everything.

Cremating the dead is more common and affordable than burials in land-scarce Hong Kong. The government said it has six crematoria which provides 34,400 cremation sessions a year - about 94 sessions every day - but families of the dead often have to wait more than 10 days until they are assigned a slot.

Although the cardboard coffins are more efficient and are said to produce less toxic gas during combustion, they aren't likely to be popular in Hong Kong, where skimping on the traditional Chinese rituals of sending the dead away is seen as a sign of disrespect.

So ... keeping the corpse in the morgue for a couple of weeks shows more respect?

But Hong Kongers should try to accept the advantages of the coffins, said to be gaining popularity in Japan and Europe ...

"The eco-coffin coincides with the Asian philosophy of integration between man and nature ... Due respect is given to the deceased, regardless of a simple or magnificent coffin."

I'm all for it; chopping down a tree, turning it into a coffin and then torching it never made much sense to me.

My father thought the same way, which is why he asked me not to go overboard when making his funeral arrangements. He'd have been horrified if I'd wasted US$10,000 on a posh velvet and mahogany cremation casket when a $39 box would suffice.

Ignoring his wishes? That would have disrespectful.

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