(Natural News) It's no secret that human activity can contribute a great deal to damaging the environment, but did you know that you are hurting our planet even in death? The current methods of cremation that are offered in California are not environmentally friendly enough for some people's tastes, and the state senate is now mulling legalizing liquid cremation.

Cremation is believed by some to be more environmentally friendly than burial, given the formaldehyde and other chemicals used in embalming bodies and the fact that large caskets – typically made of wood– are being buried in the ground and taking up a lot of precious land. Nevertheless, cremation causes mercury to be released into the air and it uses a lot of natural gas.

Enter liquid cremation, which is sometimes referred to as flameless cremation, water cremation, or bio-cremation. In this process, the dead body is dissolved using a hot chemical bath that leaves behind a sterile solution that is washed down the drain. This process has just a quarter of the carbon footprint of a traditional cremation by fire and just a sixth of that of burial.

This is the third time California has considering legalizing the unconventional approach. Two past efforts failed despite the process being legal in 14 other states.

Water cremation process is not an acid bath

Right now, there is one place in the state where bodies are legally dissolved: a UCLA lab that disposes of cadavers that the medical school no longer needs. According to the head of the school's Donated Body Program, Dean Fisher, the process does not use acid; instead, a chemical called potassium hydroxide is used to catalyze the hydrogen in water so it attacks the chemical bonds between the body's molecules faster in a process known as alkaline hydrolysis.