Dissolving the dead is the ultimate in eco-friendly funerals

"It sounds like a dishwasher", says Dale Hilton of the pressurised tube in which bodies are broken down. Photo / Facebook

A Canadian funeral business is dissolving the dead and pouring them down sewers in what is billed as the ultimate eco-friendly exit from the world.

They're billed as green funerals, and the company performing them, Hilton's Aquagreen Dispositions, has received a licence from the Ontario government to perform them, CBC News reports.

The company uses an "environmentally friendly" method using alkaline solutions to dissolve human remains, filters the resulting liquid twice, and then drains the light coffee-coloured result into the local sewage treatment system, owner Dale Hilton told the news agency.

"You come in by water, you leave by water," Mr Hilton said.

Local water officials inspected Aquagreen Dispositions ahead of giving it approval last year, and continue to check its waste water weekly.

Water official Ted Joynt said, so far, all the readings were in the appropriate ranges for commercial water use.

Once the Aquagreen Dispositions system gets rid of the liquid waste, the company dries the remaining bones, and presses them into a powder in a process widely described as flameless cremation.

"It brings your body back to its natural state," Mr Hilton said. "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 system takes about two hours to dissolve "organic material" from the body, leaving the bones for drying and crushing.

The body is placed in a pressurised tube in a solution of water, potash and salt as it dissolves.

Mr Hilton said the machine sounds like a dishwasher, and used about the same amount of electricity.