Cremation not for you? Try liquefaction.

A funeral home in Florida is now offering people the chance to be turned into a liquid rather than being cremated after they die.

The funeral home has recently installed a huge stainless steel machine that can dissolve a body in a matter of hours. Three hours to be precise. The machine turns the dead corpse into a ‘brownish, syrupy’ liquid that is then pumped into the municipal water system. In other words, Granny may very well end up heading where hordes of dead pet fish have gone, down the Thomas Crapper.

The remaining bones (that aren’t liquefied) can be ground down so the family can have a little memento, instead of a 2L bottle containing Granddad. According to funeral home’s that use them (yes, there’s a few) the process is environmentally friendly, compared to cremating, which isn’t.

The machine is an ‘alkaline hydrolysis unit’, and they are installed by Glasgow- based company called Resomation Ltd. It works by completely submerging a body in a solution of water and Potassium hydroxide, which is pressurised and heated to 180 degrees Celsius for three hours.

The founder of Resomation Ltd, Sandy Sullivan, told the BBC, “Let's face it, there's no nice way to go. You have to go from what looks like a human person to ash and bone, whether you get there by flame or decomposition.

'We're using the exact same chemistry that's carried out by bacteria but instead of happening over months and years, it happens in three hours.'

Resomation Ltd says that the system can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a funeral home by 35 per cent. Also, mercury emissions, typically released from dental fillings during cremations, are eliminated.

An American scientist told the BBC that dumping the remains of the dead body into the municipal water system was “perfectly safe”.

We don’t think being turned into a milkshake seems like the best way to go but hey, at least you’ll save a polar bear.