‘In Conversation with’ Brendan Day

In this special webinar we spoke to Brendan Day about how the UK bereavement sector is recognising the growing pressures to reduce the impact of memorials, funerals, and cremation upon the climate.

Brendan Day is highly regarded in the Death Care Sector across the UK and beyond. With an MBA from the University of Birmingham, Brendan now resides in Wales. Previously holding positions of ‘Bereavement Service Manager’, City of Cardiff Council, ‘Service Manager’, Sandwell Council, he is now the ‘Director’ of the Crematoria Abatement of Mercury Emissions Organisation and currently ‘Director’ of Green Cremation Network and ‘Secretary and Executive Officer’ of Federation of Burials and Cremation Authorities and acting as an advisor to a start-up company called Forever Mortal.

Lea-Ann McNeill, OpusXenta

Jenny Eagles
One minute into the webinar, so let’s kickoff. I’m going to hand over to Lea-Ann McNeill, and she’s going to introduce the webinar and introduce our main speaker today, Brendan Day. So, over to you, Lea-Ann.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yes, good evening, everyone. I’ve just been told that my Opus banner is back to front, so that’s good news for my very first webinar. So technical things happen, we’ll change that for next time. But welcome to everybody tonight in what is the next series of “In Conversation” chats with some of our very special guests. Tonight we have with us Mr. Brendan Day. Mister, is that what I shall call you, Brendan?

Brendan Day
I guess! I’ve been called many other things, so that’s just fine. Call me Brendan.

Lea-Ann McNeill
And I’ll get Brendan to tell us a little bit about himself in a moment. But before I do, just some housekeeping for everybody. Tonight we’ll be taking any of your questions through the Q&A feature at the bottom of your Zoom screen. So if you’ve got any questions for Brendan throughout, please post them to the Q&A point. If you’ve got any technical issues, please share those through the chat feature. So if we can just do that distinction tonight that would be great. Also, as per usual, our webinars are all recorded and these can be posted out later, along with the transcripts for anybody that wants those or who might have missed it and would like to watch it later.

Lea-Ann McNeill
So as I said, tonight, we’re joined by Mr. Brendan Day. Brendan can probably tell you a lot about himself, but reading his bio you’ll see that he’s heavily experienced in the death care industry. But I think probably more relevant to tonight’s conversation, and I’m going to read this, Brendan, if you don’t mind. He’s now the director of the Crematoria Abatement of Mercury Emissions Organization and currently the director of Green Cremation Network and secretary and executive officer of the Federation of Burials and Cremation Authorities. It was interesting when Brendan and I caught up earlier this week, I think it was, to have a little bit of a chat about tonight and tonight’s conversation. Brendan was really strict with me in saying, Lea-Ann, I’m not a tree hugger. I’m a pragmatic environmentalist. So we’ll see what we think about that by the time we get to the end of tonight, Brendan.

Brendan Day
Yeah, that’s great Lea-Ann, I think that is exactly what I am. I think it’s important to stress that, that I’ve been in this sector for 40 years now, managing cemeteries and crematoria and especially topical today on Earth Day, we are facing these environmental issues and I face them in my mind, I’m facing them as a manager of a cemetery or crematory.

Brendan Day
That’s the angle I’m approaching this with, because I say my background is not in environment, or environmental science. I’ve got my three litre Jag out on the drive outside, so I’m burning petrol in the way I shouldn’t. So, you know, I’m not here to bang the drum. I’m here really to discuss what we’re doing in the UK, the environment, what we’re doing as a sector, and perhaps see if we can transfer some of our learning to yourselves and to anybody else, and also to learn off you, to see what you guys are doing in Australia, and the Southern Hemisphere, and bring that sort of our way. That’s what’s important to me.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Great, so what I might do then, Brendan is, Brendan doesn’t have a presentation as such for this evening, it is very much an “In conversation”. So what I might do is share the one slide, Brendan, that you did want our listeners to see. And you can talk us through that high level government policy and law in regards to what’s happening, I guess, across the UK So if people would just like to bear with me just a little bit, I will get that happening.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Here we go. Nope, “screen sharing has failed”. Of course, it worked before. Pardon? I just said screen sharing has failed, because that would be right.

Brendan Day
If you want, I don’t mind it, so that we can jump on and basically just, all I wanted to share was the the pathway that the UK is having to take between now and 2050 to hit our carbon reduction targets. And these are the carbon reduction targets. Ah, there we go. That’s the one.

Brendan Day
So these these targets are set in law. And only two days ago, we were told by Boris Johnson that some of these have been brought forward 15 years. So, as you all probably know, this is a big conference taking place today. President Biden on the environment. And you can see that top line, the black line, if we don’t take any of these measures, that’s where we will end up at 2050, somewhere where we are now. But the bottom of that line, the blue line with the green, that is where we’ve got to get to.

Brendan Day
And I think what’s important, what this illustrates despite more than anything else is the different steps the UK is having to take in demand reduction and efficiencies. The first one, the purple. So it’s the reducing demand for carbon intensive activities, included with that is even things like meat production, diary, how to reduce the amount of meat we eat, which is a big setback for me, and dairy we have.

Brendan Day
And then taking up low carbon solutions, the orange, that’s electrification. So the government’s taken those low hanging fruit of producing electricity through coal, that’s being phased out. Gas is going to have to be phased out. We have to look to expand in hydrogen and other low carbon technologies. CO2 capture. And then the third area is the low carbon hydrogen electricity production. That’s got to be increased massively. And finally offsetting emissions, the green. That’s going to be the planting of millions of trees across the UK.

Brendan Day
And I think what that slide tells us is this is societal change. It’s not somebody else’s problem. It’s not because China is using too many power stations and they’re going to switch their power stations off. Both in Australia and in the UK and across the world, society itself is going to have to change. I think the important thing is that means that our sectors are going to have to change and we can either shape that change ourselves, or that change will be forced upon us. So I think it’s really important. If it’s one message I can get over tonight or this morning, is it’s going to affect you, it’s going to affect your sector and you don’t have to do anything. But if you don’t do something, you’re likely to find other people will see this as an opportunity to change. They will come to market with new products, new services. And you will simply end up out of business. So I think it’s really important that we all grasp this as an opportunity, and look to change. And something we’ve done in the UK now recently, is creating something called the Environmental Stewardship Group. And that’s made up of the Federation Abatement Cremation authorities, the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Managers, and also the Cremation Society.

Brendan Day
And that has been facilitated by a company called Cemetery Development Services Group, a what that’s done is bring the major cemetery and crematorium trade associations together. And during this year, there’s a series of webinars taking place to find out from everyone else in the sector, funeral directors, masons, florists, suppliers, investors. Where we are as a sector, we really feel that we need to find out where we are now. We can create that baseline and then next year, and the year after, we go to involve funeral directors, masons, everywhere else in trying to find our path forward. I think it is really important that everybody takes this on board if you want to stay in business.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Brendan, how has this been received in the UK so far, certainly within this industry?

Brendan Day
Well, I think at the moment it’s been received very well. And the conversations are now taking place. The questions are being asked. But literally just on the news this morning, one of the commentators was saying “at the moment, the governments and the governments of the world are at the stage of setting targets and of course, setting targets is the easy part. The more difficult part comes when we try and hit those targets.” And then because it’s societal change, it starts to impact on all of us and it starts to impact on our businesses. And it is to say, the debate’s taking place, but, you know, there are some negative voices. So I say, or questioning voices. People question why? Why should we do this?

Brendan Day
Like an area that we could discuss would be memorials, for instance. We have a lot of granite. Granite memorials are very popular in the UK, both in our cemeteries and crematoria. Black granite predominates. It is the granite of choice for today. But for us that’s being shipped from all the way across the world, from places like China and India. So it’s got a huge amount of carbon embedded in it, in the transportation of it to the UK. So the question now has been asked, can we not use local granite? Now, then we probably say “there is no naturally occurring black granite in the UK” they’re grey granites or pink granites. So that’s, this is a question we think the memorial industry will need to look at. And then they’ll need to consider it because there’s some real implications starting to come about in the government have announced that both maritime and air transport is going to fall within the carbon targets.

Brendan Day
So it’s likely there’s going to be carbon taxes. So, again, if you’re shipping stone all the way around the world, there’s likely to be potentially a hefty carbon tax on it. And also on one of our webinars, which OpusXenta kindly hosted for us, we have one local authority in the UK who are going to introduce a carbon tax. So families want to bring in a granite headstone which is being imported into the UK They’ll have to pay a tax on it for the carbon.

Brendan Day
Now, you know, I can’t say enough. I’m not saying it’s good or bad. I’m just saying, you know, that’s where we’re at. That’s the sector we’re going to. And it may well be that people are happy to pay carbon taxes, but it is going to become increasingly apparent, I think, throughout the sector that these questions are being asked. And some authorities will take steps to address the climate emergency, which in the UK, 70 percent of local authorities have declared a climate emergency in their area. So they are looking at ways in which they can reduce their carbon footprint.

Lea-Ann McNeill
So talking about some of those ways and you were just talking about memorials then. I know there’s certainly conversation around different types of memorials. So maybe not even a permanent memorial. I think when you and I were chatting the other day, you mentioned, you know, often some of the trends would show that after 10 years, these memorials aren’t actually visited anymore. So, you know, do we really need these permanent memorials versus a more temporary style?

Brendan Day
I think this is, it’s another question. Because, you know, our sector we talk a lot about tradition, it’s fairly common. Especially from the funeral directors side, there’s always talk about families want tradition. They like tradition. I’m not convinced by that. I think the pandemic has shown that people quite readily move to new types of funerals in the UK. But, yes, when we think the granite is one of the hardest materials on Earth, it will last for thousands of years. Do we really need a grave marker made out of a material that will last thousands of years when certainly anecdotal evidence shows that within 10 years a large proportion of families are not visiting anymore. So for us in the UK and certainly when I was a manager, we had the issue of all these Victorian memorials and also memorials from the 60s and 70s, which would not fit so well, becoming a problem, becoming a hazard, which put local authorities out large amounts of money to put right.

Brendan Day
And when we cleared areas, we turned them into lawn sections, all this granite would either be buried on site or go to landfill. And then it occurs to me that virtually on that basis is potentially a quarry in every town in the UK of old stones, which could be reused and recycled if they just had the faces of the stone removed for depths of like 10, 15 mil, and then recycled. I think these are the things we need to look at.

Brendan Day
We need to consider again. And plus masons need to consider do they need to look towards alternatives? That’s really hard. It’s hard, that sort of change, especially if you come from a traditional family firm. You know, we’ve been doing this for five generations. But, you know, things change, times move on. You know, a lot of areas in our lives, I’m just sat here behind my double glazed aluminium windows. I’m sure before that we had wooden windows for the last five hundred years or whatever. We don’t anymore. There’s a better prototype there. The next wave. So I think masons is a fantastic opportunity.

Brendan Day
And I was at a cemetery recently where they have oak headstones that were really nice, carved oak. Or again, you know, we’re living in, I’m living here in Cardiff, in Wales. I should be going to mid-north Wales later today. All the slate headstones in the cemeteries look fantastic. Victorian, and such, that slate is still there. Now it is probably more expensive to quarry. But again, we’re told that if they have the volume of work that is currently going to China and India, those prices could be brought down.

Brendan Day
So perhaps we should be looking again to that green capital that’s tied up in all our countries rather than traveling all the way around the world to bring it back to us.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah! And actually, we haven’t got any Q&A, but it’s probably something even that I would ask those that are participating in the webinar tonight. It doesn’t have to just be Q&A, if you’ve got any comments around that, around how you are saying perhaps, changes in memorials and monuments in your areas that might reflect some of what Brendan’s saying. Please feel free to share that information through the Q&A as well. And we can incorporate some of those thoughts into conversation. Because certainly I know we’re seeing here in Australia the emergence of some of those more digital technologies and digital monuments and those sorts of things, that may not straight away replace some of those granite ones. But might over time, as you say, sometimes change is incremental.

Brendan Day
Yeah, I noticed somewhere on the digital memorials, they were referring to themselves as digital masons, the guys delivering that service, and they see themselves as in that tradition of masons.

Lea-Ann McNeill
It’s just providing something different. Yeah.

Brendan Day
Yeah, I think, again, I found this is a fantastic organization in the UK because the British Register of Accredited Memorial Masons, and the Federation, we’re on their management board and they’re a great group, and they’re producing great products at very high standards. So I wouldn’t want anybody to think I’ve got a dammed on granite or dammed on memorial masons in particular. I say, it is just these demands that are increasingly placed on us that we will need to respond to one way or another.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Actually, we have got a question or comment that’s come through the Q&A in regards to memorials. And the question asks whether you feel, Richard,

Brendan Day
Brendan.

Lea-Ann McNeill
I’m sorry, Brendan. The skill set of memorials in the UK to produce sufficient memorials to replace those imported from India. So I guess is there a better product, and is there the skill set of Masons in the UK to to take that place?

Brendan Day
The short answer to that is I do not know. It’s not an area I know. But what I would suggest is that if the demand is there, it will be fulfilled. The masons and the quarry people will meet demand, I’ve no doubt about that. But no, I don’t know the answer to that. But I think that’s what the issue we’re all facing at the moment as we start on this journey. We’ve got so many questions.

Brendan Day
We’ve got to do something. The status quo will not be an option. We have to do something. But it’s just what? What is the solution? And something I discussed with people, if I was still a manager to a crematorium now, and my authority declared a climate emergency and I had twenty thousand pounds or whatever it was, would I spend that money on abatement from our crematorium for a particular mission? Or what I spend on electric lawn mowers? On electric hedge trimmers? What’s going to be better for the environment? What is the best way to spend that money that’s going to give me the biggest return? And again, at the moment, we don’t have those answers, which is why with the Environmental Stewardship Group and Jon Cross from CDS is doing sterling work on that, is looking into these things, which is certainly the authority that is putting the charge on imported granite. They’ve had discussions with quarries, and they’ve been told yes, they can deliver. And I’m sure, you know, if the demand increases, then so will supply.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah. And in fact, that might answer another question that came through around that challenge or the ease of being able to access stone and granite, whether it was actually just easier to get it from overseas versus getting it in our own countries. And so perhaps even if that is the case, it might take things like carbon taxes that encourage us to actually sort of look closer to home.

Brendan Day
Yeah, absolutely. You know it will. And obviously, as I say this kind of covers sort of all areas of our sector. Cremation is no different. The UK Cremations are 80 percent of the sector. And we predominantly use natural gas to fire our cremators. We are seeing some of that first generation or second generation, we’ve had electric cremators in the UK for many, many years unabated. But now we’re seeing that first or second generation of electric cremators that have got a abatement on them.

Brendan Day
And I think there’s only two sites in the UK. I think there’s only one abated crematorium site that’s running above. I might be wrong. It’s something that is changing on a daily basis. So that’s something we’re looking at, but predominantly in the UK, at about 310 crematoria, probably 307 of those are all gas fired, natural gas. Now that produces the single largest carbon footprint of any crematorium and, you know, you don’t do anything else at the crematorium, whether it’s heating it, or cutting the grass, or whatever, comes anywhere near that.

Brendan Day
So, again, it’s going to be important that we look for alternatives to how we cremate. You know, electric may be the answer. I don’t think it’s a majorly the answer. I say with over 300 sites in the UK on gas, we have to look at any other way that we can power those cremators. Now, again, some suppliers are delivering and researching hydrogen, that is key. Governments are looking to sort of a blended supply of hydrogen equally. I know there are sort of bio gas, bio LPG.

Brendan Day
There’s a crematorium in Holland. I think it’s called DRM in Holland, where they have now altered. They’ve been using gas from fracking, which clearly, you know, is a bit of a no no. That’s getting a worse reputation as we talk. They have now converted onto Bio-gas, ontp bio LPG, which can be done quite readily, quite simply. And it’s one hundred percent green. So that is you know, that’s another question that we are asking in the UK, and especially as we’ve got to make these changes in the near future, within the next 30 years. You know, if you’re buying cremators, they’re going to last at least 20 years.

Brendan Day
You need to know that they’re future proof so they can change and adopt any of the new technologies which are being brought in.

Lea-Ann McNeill
You talk about cremators and obviously it’s not just the cremators themselves, but it’s also what’s going into it. And there was a, you know, there’s certainly been a big push here in Australia in recent years around cardboard coffins and people thinking that cardboard coffins are more environmentally sustainable. But that’s not always the case, is it?

Brendan Day
No, you know, that is a hot debate, pardon the pun, In the UK too, because, yes, you know, are cardboard coffins the future? They do have obviously benefits for the bereaved families, you know, against chipboard, which are predominantly chipboard. But there’s concern then about the amount of NOX being produced from these coffins because of the formaldehyde in the resins.

Brendan Day
But again, it’s you know, it’s a complex picture. There isn’t you know, it’s not a matter of one being good and one being bad. And again, I come back to that story needs the research in the sector. Any research, empirical research, we can get, we would greatly receive it at the moment. We have to keep all these things sort of within that context. We’re looking at that big picture, the environment, and it’s any of these little things we can do to build it out, then the better.

Brendan Day
But certainly, yeah, we’re considering I know we’ve got an organization in the UK, the funeral Furnishing Manufacturers Association, this is something they’re considering with their members who manufacture coffins. There’s also the vehicles, the hearses and the limousines, where we’re seeing more electric vehicles come on line. But again, I’ve heard concerns because the limo is a such bigger and they’re custom made, there’s so much carbon locked up in building that vehicle, you know, whether it’s electrical or petrol, in the long term over it’s lifetime, it might not make a great deal of difference.

Brendan Day
It really is. It’s a complex picture.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah. So I want to talk about burials a bit yet, too. But before we do, a question’s come through. And I suppose what this really highlights is when we think of cemetery operations, we do think of cemetery, we think of our cremators and what they’re pumping out. But we might sometimes forget that even the way that we manage our grounds can, in fact, need rethinking. And a comment made here, or a question, I suppose, in our Q&A says “I’m a smaller cemetery, so where do I start?”

Lea-Ann McNeill
And but they do mention that they’re starting to take small steps, just starting to look at battery operated tools. So grounds maintenance is another real area that we could start to focus on.

Brendan Day
So I think small steps are the key. And in one of the OpusXenta webinars, my colleague Julie Dunk, the chief exec of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematory Management, did a paper, and she gave some excellent examples of small steps. I certainly, I think that was webinar two that we did for OpusXenta. So if anyone could look that up, it’s well worth it. But yes, it is all about small steps. It is about the maintenance. Obviously, the first thing is, in something in the UK, the environment agency controls things on water pollution in the UK and in recent years they’ve become increasingly interested in water pollution.

Brendan Day
This is again, we looked at the construction of coffins that were buried in the ground. If they can test the formaldehyde they contained. There’s also if bodies have been embalmed. The chemicals that are being used for that. And again, I’m not anti-embalming, but if I’m the manager of a cemetery and I’m responsible for what’s leaching into local watercourses, I want to know what funeral directors are bringing to my site, is only cause me a problem. I’m not going to be the one that has to pay to tank the cemetery to prevent it leaching out, you know, or they won’t take it to court for polluted watercourses.

Brendan Day
So we do have to be careful. We do have to be aware. And I think if we can reduce the longevity of any chemicals used in coffin construction or in embalming, in that side, then should I think that should be encouraged so we don’t damage the environment and pollute the watercourses. And we maintain our grounds, again, I think that’s really important and I don’t have to go back to far in my career when we were using chemicals like 24D, 245T, which is sort of basic Agent Orange was used in Vietnam.

Brendan Day
You know, it was like a lunar landscape when we’d finished spraying some of our gounds and we destroyed all biodiversity. So we can look at less intensive maintenance. Having more wildflower areas, providing areas for greater biodiversity. Looking at the plants we use, do they suit the conditions? If it’s very hot weather, where you guys are, or if it’s particularly wet where we are. You know, we need plants to suit the conditions, we need to reduce our maintenance cycles, perhaps identify key areas around the chapels or the entrances, where we do maintain the high standard. It is welcoming. But equally, we’re open, we’re honest. We’re saying to the public we recognize there’s a need for greater biodiversity and we’re going to deliver it. And also another thing, I’m sure you guys probably too, more than us, water harvesting. You know, because we do a lot of bedding in the UK and we used to grow the bedding in the crematoria in years gone by. But as everybody knows, if you’re bedding plants, especially when you plant them, there’s a lot of watering to be done to get them in and then during dry weather again we’re watering hour after hour.

Brendan Day
So that’s just going to become a greater problem. I see. I think the last year, because it’s Earth Day they’ve announced, it’s been the hottest in Europe since records began. We keep hearing this about being the hottest or the wettest. So, again, we have to react to that. We can’t continue, us with our cemeteries in the UK, we can’t keep building them on sort of areas with high water tables of floodplains. We must take into account the environment far more when we’re delivering and developing our services.

Lea-Ann McNeill
I think that’s a really great point. I think most of us listening here tonight have probably got a cemetery perhaps under our control or within the vicinity, that was probably built in the wrong place. It’s cemeteries were built in an area that was just outside of town that somebody needed a cemetery. But we all look back at them now. I know certainly in areas where I’ve managed, where the reality is, is it was in an area where there’s high water, or it was in an area that was particularly rocky underneath.

Lea-Ann McNeill
So it requires heavy machinery in order to dig that. So I think that notion of a really good cemetery planning within our settings, it’s not been well done in the past and could be a real area to tap into.

Brendan Day
Well, I think, Lea-Ann, another thing they were trying to get in the UK is lifting deep, we call it. That’s where we will reuse graves after a set period of time. And we’ve, there’s been a lot of research done. We’ve suggested to government should be ninety nine years, providing the families no longer own the graves, they’re not Commonwealth War graves, there’s no historical, social, cultural interest. That we could re-dig those graves, take any remains out, put them in an oak casket and bury them in the very bottom of the grave and reuse the grave.

Brendan Day
So, at the moment, we can’t do that in the UK. We cannot exume remains without the next-of-kin’s permission, and the grave owner’s permission. So if it’s a grave from the Victorian times, it’s impossible. So we keep adding more and more cemeteries. We have to keep maintaining the old ones, but we have to, again, and this cost millions and millions, it’s like three million pounds to open a new cemetery. And I know in my last authority, because it’s just by Birmingham, it’s in the middle of a conurbation. You know, the choice of lands is incredibly limited.

Brendan Day
So the one site we eventually chose, we have to cap disused mine shafts before we could use it. Yeah, this is across the road from a cemetery where they’ve got graves that haven’t been visited for decades and decades, families have long gone. So we need to, and again, this is something that was done in the UK up to the turn of the 19th century, in churchyards, graves would be reused, you know, for generation after generation.

Brendan Day
Fortunately, in the 1930s, we stopped that. We started selling graves in perpetuity. And so we now inherited these problems. Are these Victorian cemeteries, cant reuse hundreds of thousands of graves, got to maintain them, and trying to find more land. So for us, that’s a key ask of government we’re lobbying for is to be able to reuse graves in a compassionate manner.

Lea-Ann McNeill
And I think one of the other things that, and a question, again, has come through Q&A, and this is something I’m quite interested in as well, because we’re sort of starting to see a bit of a move here in Australia as well towards that notion of green burial sites, or woodland areas where perhaps people aren’t putting in those monuments that are going to be there forever and instead they might actually be planting trees. Scott talks here about the environment response of planting thirty thousand hectares of trees a year in the UK. Do we think or are you seeing in the UK more of a take up of these green type sites and in the planting of trees within them?

Brendan Day
Yes, I think that without a doubt, there are more and more woodland burial sites, and Ken West, who started the Woodland burial movement back in the 1980s. I think it was late 1980s. And we do see more and more.

Brendan Day
And also, it’s a good use again, with farmer’s. You can’t keep producing all this meat that we’re not allowed to eat anymore and said, you know, it’s another use of their land. But we are seeing that. And I think again, it’s a generational thing. You know, as the younger generations come along, they’re making the arrangements for their parents funerals and they’re much more in contact with the environmental movement.

Brendan Day
I recall, we spoke with one family in the cemetery, Woodland Cemetery, and the gentleman was there burying his wife, and children, they were choosing the grave that she’s passed down to the children and showed them the woodland site, and the grass was natural, the trees. Loved it, he said “You will keep cutting the grass regularly, won’t you?” and his children said “No, Dad, that’s not the point of it.” So I think it is a growing need. I would have to say, 80 percent of the population is still being cremated. We have 600,000 deaths a year in the region. So we’re looking at over 400,000 cremations a year.

Brendan Day
I don’t think that all will go to Woodland. And again, you know, we were taught about a thousand graves to an acre. So it would take a lot of land. Again, if we cannot reuse the grave spaces, it’s just going to keep taking up more and more and more land.

Lea-Ann McNeill
More land. I’ve seen some great practices, a few examples out here in Australia, where different Cemeterians have taken areas of land that might have actually had some sort of significant vegetation growing in the area, it was a special environmental place. And by respectfully turning those into green burial sites, it’s actually added another layer of protection to the important vegetation, and the animals that live within it, because obviously there’s much less chance that it’s likely to be to be bulldozed and developed.

Brendan Day
Absolutely. And I think, again, we shouldn’t lose track, we shouldn’t lose sight of where we’re coming from. I thought this recently when I was by a local church, and it’s a sort of really old churchyard, a lovely, old sort of normal church, grounds and a great variety of wildlife. When you think that for a lot of people, our cemeteries and crematoria are green spaces, which they really appreciate. For some people it might be their only local green space.

Brendan Day
So that’s the background we’re coming from, and we can build on that. And views our grounds differently, we can use them to protect areas. We shouldn’t celebrate ourselves too much. And I think, again, that’s where if we’re innovative, if we use our imaginations, we can build on what we’re coming from, we can improve the products and the range of products we’re delivering to meet the needs of the new environmental changes that come along. I say, again, in the UK, when we started introducing the abated cremators, that was a massive leap forward for us.

Brendan Day
You know, I can recall cremators, we thought our process going, those were brought in by government. And we had to have the manufacturers. And I know that, you know, I know you use very similar, I think, in Australia, you use things like the FT three cremators, we have that in common, exactly the same as in the UK. I think the only differences is we have the abatement on. The highlight might be mercury, I’ve already talked about the mercury abatement. But it’s not only mercury we’re taking out. We’re taking out the particulates, we’re talking about the furines, we’re talking about the dioxines, the acid gases, were all brought out through that abatement plan, which has been added on to the cremators.

Brendan Day
And so we’ve been able to evolve the service we deliver to be a much cleaner service, without any impact greatly on what we’re delivering to the families. So starting with innovation, working together across the sector with the masons, the funeral directors, our manufacturers and suppliers of cremators and everything else we use. Our cemetery leaders and teams, our crematoria leads and teams, we can grasp what the future has in store for us. And take this as an opportunity to continue service improvement.

Lea-Ann McNeill
You talk about innovation and changes in the sector. So we’re starting to see and hear a lot more about things like resomation and composting. As somebody that hasn’t, I mean, we’ve really not seen a lot of that out here in Australia yet. Can you perhaps share with us what these two new techniques are involving?

Brendan Day
Certainly. I suppose the one that’s got the most traction at the moment out of those is resomation. We’ve seen that, we’ve heard about it for a number of years in the UK and what’s held it back? I think, one, it’s a new technology. But the problem was certainly when I was working with the local authority, we were going to bring it in. We got the plan and permission. We got the budget, we got the building and everything, but we couldn’t get permission from the water authority to let what comes off the resomation, the liquid comes off, go to drain.

Brendan Day
So the Federation, we did a study involving Sheffield University, the manufacturers of the resomator, LBBC. We all got together. We involved government in that, and we carried out five resomations, basically using cremation documentation, and then the liquid, which came out to the resomator, that was sampled by Sheffield University. It was peer reviewed by another university and found to be perfectly OK. Perfectly okay to go to a treatment plant and be treated as normal. So I found that a really interesting experience.

Brendan Day
The resomator was, you know, a nice machine. You fit it in easy to the building. We put it in. There is, I think the question will be asked about public perception, you know, where you have people running it down the drain. I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it 100 times. But equally, you know, there was a time when people said that about putting granny up the chimney. And I think, you know, the moment will come and it could be the moment now. And we saw this with cremation in the UK. Like the 1902 Cremation Act legalized cremation, okay? But by the 1940s, it had only reached four percent.

Brendan Day
But within a generation, within 30 years, by 1967, it was more than 50 percent of funerals ended in a cremation. And that was because, you know, the time is right. People like the Reverend Dr Peter Jones (?) have written on this extensively, that postwar modernism movement. People wanted something modern, they wanted something different. And I think that was a driver. Local authorities found cremation better, funeral directors find it better and it took off. I think the same could happen with resomation. Now could be the time.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah, it’s interesting. I note that we’ve probably only got a few more minutes left, but I think, Brendan, Scott made a really great comment about what is tradition. And we talk about tradition and what that actually is. Is tradition the provision of our end of life service? Or is it how we actually physically dispose of a body? What is actually that tradition?

Brendan Day
Well that is a good question from Scott, and I think he should keep his questions to himself. No, I really don’t know what tradition is. I think it’s one of those things, isn’t it? I think beyond the fact that perhaps, when we make funeral arrangements, whatever the first person we arranged a funeral with, we want that for the second person. So, if your mom goes to one crem, you’ll want the father to go there as well. But beyond that, I think tradition, perhaps, is a construct which the sector uses to deliver a whole range of services and justify delivering those services.

Brendan Day
As I said with cremation, we bury people in the UK from the Roman times all the way up to 1967, and one generation changed from burial to cremation. So there is a tradition of a thousand years, which went in 30 years.

Lea-Ann McNeill
So on that very difficult question for you at the end, Brendan, probably is a way of wrapping up. I think what I hear is that things are changing, people’s expectations are changing, regulation is changing. And as a sector, we need to change with that. And I think a couple of things we can start to adopt is, like you say, start small. Every little bit counts. And in fact, it’s the sum of the whole that will make the difference. But buy local. So whether it be granite before anything else, buy local.

Brendan Day
Yeah.

Lea-Ann McNeill
So for those of you that are out there in webinar world, thank you very much, Brendan, tonight. And it’s a nice way to spend a Thursday night. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday. For everybody else, as I mentioned, the webinar has been recorded and we will be sending out a recording and a transcript for those of you that are interested. So thank you very much again tonight, Brendan. I appreciate your time.

Brendan Day
I really enjoyed it, Lea-Ann. Thank you.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Thank you. Good night, everybody.

Brendan Day
Good night.

l