Funeral business dissolves bodies and pours them into town's sewers for eco friendly burial

'It's the same way as being buried in the ground, but instead of taking 15, 20 years to disintegrate, it does it in a quicker process'

The body's organic material is dissolved while the skeleton is pressed into a fine white powder and returned to the deceased's family (iStock)

A funeral company has started to dissolve human remains in an alkaline solution before pouring them into the town's sewers as part of an eco friendly method of burial.

The owner of AquaGreen Dispositions, Dale Hilton, says he started the alkaline hydrolysis business after watching the "green wave" of biodegradable caskets and urns sweep through the funeral industry.

"It brings your body back to its natural state," Mr Hilton told CBC News. "It's the same way as being buried in the ground, but instead of taking 15, 20 years to disintegrate, it does it in a quicker process.

"And it's all environmentally friendly."

The AquaGreen website says their "flameless cremation" method uses a combination of water, temperature and alkalinity to "accelerate the natural course of breakdown accomplished by our eco-system at the end of life".

It takes less than two hours to dissolve the body's organic material.

The remaining fluid then goes through two filter systems before it is sent into the Ontario sewage treatment system, leaving the skeleton behind.

The bones are then dried in a convection oven and pressed into a fine white powder and returned to the deceased's family to be scattered.

The process also preserves medical implants, which can then be recycled.

Mr Green claims to have conducted nearly 200 flame-free cremations since his business opened last year.

"It's 100 per cent green," he added. "Flame-based [cremation] is not environmentally friendly, but up until this point, that's the only thing we've had.

"Now, I think people are looking at it a different way."