Until this year, most Rhode Island pet owners have either buried or cremated their pets after death. But a new facility in R.I. is trying to offer a greener alternative.
Nature’s Pawprint, the Ocean State’s first aquamation facility, opened last month. Co-founders Jane Linden ’85 and Michelle Sylvester wanted to offer Rhode Islanders a climate-friendly alternative for postmortem care.
Aquamation, also known as water cremation or alkaline hydrolysis, exposes animal remains to water and an alkaline solution to speed up decomposition. The process emits 90% less carbon than the traditional flame method, according to Bio-Response Solutions, one of the companies that builds the aquamation machines.
Just as they would with traditional cremation, owners still receive their pet’s ashes, though lighter in color. The process also generates between 20% and 30% more ashes than traditional cremation.
Traditional cremation methods burn remains at 1,600 to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes some of the inorganic matter to be released into the air. The process of aquamation occurs at 200 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit instead, allowing more minerals to remain, according to Bio-Response Solutions.
Linden and Sylvester also provide environmentally friendly urns to their clients and offer services that cover the entire end-of-life cycle for pets — including euthanasia — via their other business.
For Sylvester, the process of aquamation is extra personal.
“I did pick aquamation for my cat last month, and I absolutely wanted aquamation,” she said. Sylvester preferred aquamation’s gentler and eco-friendly process over the “aggressive nature of flame.”
Both having over two decades of experience in the veterinary field, Linden and Sylvester have also seen many families with “a lot of questions about (pet) aftercare,” Sylvester said.
Many families were “really worried” that the remains they received were not that of their pet. “We thought, ‘You know what? We can do this ourselves in a better way,’” Sylvester said.
Deceased pets each have their own compartment in the aquamation machines, and the remains are triple-checked with a metal tag, computer-tracking software and handwritten notes, according to Linden.
Sylvester believes that even more pet owners will choose aquamation once they are informed about the process. “When you’re cutting edge, when you’re the first, you have to kind of pave that road and do the education,” she said.
In January of this year, Providence resident Steven Jacobson cremated his dog Rosie after she passed away due to a weekslong battle with cancer. But had he known about aquamation sooner — and that the option was “just as effective, more environmentally friendly and didn’t cost substantially more” — he may have pursued that instead.
“We’d certainly have considered it,” Jacobson wrote in an email to The Herald.
Though pet aquamation is legal in Rhode Island, aquamation for humans remains controversial and has not been legalized in the Ocean State. The process is currently legal for humans in 28 other states.
Kim Shute, director of community relations for Memorial Funeral Homes in Newport, said her organization is hoping to be the first facility to offer human alkaline hydrolysis services in Rhode Island.
Shute added that alkaline hydrolysis is not a knock on traditional flame cremation, but rather “just adding another (option) so that we’re able to provide across the spectrum of what those families want,” she said. “We’re not trying to push this down anybody’s throat.”
