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JANUARY 25, 2011 TAGS: BURIAL, ENVIRONMENT ADD A COMMENT

Town to Heat Swimming Pool with Crematorium Emissions

This has happened before. In 2009, a Swedish crematorium announced that it would begin using the hot emissions it released from cremating bodies to heat its own premises. As the Telegraph explained it, The Halmstad, Sweden funeral home and crematorium, conquered a difficult engineering problem:

When a body is cremated, toxic materials are released from the corpse. For example, fillings in the teeth, when heated to high temperatures, release mercury. In order to filter out the toxic materials before they are released into the air, the crematorium must cool the smoke from around 1,000C to 150C. But, with the heat now directed into the public heating system, the smoke will already be much closer to 150C and the crematorium will spend less on materials, including water, to cool it down.

So the crematorium scored a two-fer, free heat and decreased cost in meeting emission standards. The borough council of the English town Redditch (seriously, Red Ditch?) has taken note, announcing that it would begin to use the emissions from its crematorium to heat to town's public pool.

Despite a few locals protestation—“It’s eerie”—Redditch will save over $22,000 a year. The beginning of a trend?