Japan is set to open its first pet funeral facility that lays pets to rest without fire, using “alkaline hydrolysis” instead. Reacting to a Yahoo! News article, posters on 5ch’s Science News+ board offered a string of practical takes — some said they’d accept it as an option if it costs about the same as cremation, while others pointed out that the treated wastewater should be safe to release into the sewer once neutralized. At the same time, people raised questions like how the method would handle large dogs such as Saint Bernards, and what form the bones or ashes would take afterward, making the mechanics and safety of the unfamiliar term “alkaline hydrolysis funeral” a central point of discussion.
Thought this was some kind of stealth push for burial, but no.
3AnonymousSep 17, 2026 21:34
Wish it left them clean enough to make a skeleton specimen out of.
4AnonymousSep 17, 2026 21:36
Doesn't make sense to me — better to turn them into ashes and keep them in a small urn. A skeleton would just be a pain to deal with.
5AnonymousSep 17, 2026 21:37
My cat died last year and cremation, urn included, came to 23,000 yen. If 'alkaline hydrolysis funerals' cost about the same as cremation, it's fine to just leave it up to the owner.
6AnonymousSep 17, 2026 21:42
Like a skeleton specimen, or taxidermy.
7AnonymousSep 17, 2026 21:45
If the wastewater goes into the sewer and ends up drinkable again, that's pretty eco-friendly.
15AnonymousSep 17, 2026 23:12
Re: #7 If I recall, this just dissolves the body with caustic soda, so if you neutralize the leftover liquid with hydrochloric acid or some other acid, it should be totally fine to flush down the sewer.
8AnonymousSep 17, 2026 22:09
I've got such a strong image of cremation as "sending them off into the sky" that this gives me a little pushback.
11AnonymousSep 17, 2026 22:24
Why not just do a mealworm funeral?
12AnonymousSep 17, 2026 22:31
You can't use human crematory furnaces for pets, so there's a space/land problem behind this.
13AnonymousSep 17, 2026 22:39
As long as nobody's eating it, I guess it's fine. But still, dissolving them…
14AnonymousSep 17, 2026 22:42
Apparently some people even do formalin funerals.
38AnonymousSep 18, 2026 18:57
Re: #14 I saw that in a dream once and it traumatized me.
16AnonymousSep 18, 2026 02:36
Just bury them in the yard.
17AnonymousSep 18, 2026 02:37
Apparently city dwellers just put them out as burnable trash.
18AnonymousSep 18, 2026 06:03
Just eat your dead pet, problem solved.
19AnonymousSep 18, 2026 07:13
Re: #15 So it goes from the sewer into the Tama River, and then gets drawn back in by a water treatment plant downstream?
20AnonymousSep 18, 2026 07:28
Same as with euthanasia — pets really are ahead of humans on this stuff.
21AnonymousSep 18, 2026 08:54
Is this some kind of loophole related to licensing rules?
23AnonymousSep 18, 2026 09:22
How do they even treat the wastewater?
24AnonymousSep 18, 2026 09:24
𓃠 Guess as a dim-witted Neanderthal like me, mummification's off the table for my funeral too, in the end.
25AnonymousSep 18, 2026 14:47
Just go with a composting burial.
26AnonymousSep 18, 2026 15:07
Freeze-dry it, pulverize it with ultrasound, press it down tight, and seal it in resin — that'd make it nice and compact. Mold it into the shape of a memorial tablet (ihai) and the remains become the tablet itself — pretty convenient.
27AnonymousSep 18, 2026 15:30
Seriously though, what do you do when a big dog like a Saint Bernard dies?
28AnonymousSep 18, 2026 15:48
Re: #27 Put out an urgent recruitment ad online for it.
29AnonymousSep 18, 2026 16:06
Animal carcasses are sold plain and simple at the supermarket, though.
39AnonymousSep 18, 2026 18:58
Re: #29 So you're saying people should just eat their dead pets, huh?
30AnonymousSep 18, 2026 16:08
You guys throw out animal carcass scraps as burnable trash too, don't you?
31AnonymousSep 18, 2026 16:21
Turn it into meatballs and do a sky burial — feed it to the birds.
32AnonymousSep 18, 2026 16:54
Re: '>1 "doesn't use fire"' — I tried brainstorming what it could be: uses water, uses gas pressure, uses a press machine, organic-decomposing bacteria, strong acid, strong alkali…
33AnonymousSep 18, 2026 17:05
If you just left them in the mountains or the sea, some creature would neatly eat or break them down. I've come to think every living thing is born to become another living thing's food, keeping the cycle going.
34AnonymousSep 18, 2026 17:58
There are just too many humans to leave it all up to that natural cycle, though.
35AnonymousSep 18, 2026 18:10
Make the body transparent…
36AnonymousSep 18, 2026 18:34
Human stomach acid dissolves pork, beef, chicken, octopus, cartilage — all of it, every single day. Though the pet funeral method is 'alkaline hydrolysis,' and stomach acid is hydrochloric acid, so the process is different.
40AnonymousSep 18, 2026 19:37
Wouldn't that work for humans too?
Background and Key Points on This Topic
Alkaline hydrolysis is an existing technology that breaks down remains using an alkaline solution such as potassium hydroxide; in the West it’s known as “water cremation” or “aquamation,” and some U.S. states and other countries already recognize it as an alternative to human cremation. Because it doesn’t use fire, it’s said to produce less CO2, and since the bone-equivalent material isn’t broken down, remains can still be placed in an urn just like after cremation. Some posters in the thread mistakenly assumed “even the bones dissolve,” but in fact the skeleton itself remains intact — the standard process dries and pulverizes it before returning it to the family. As for the wastewater, as one poster above pointed out (comment #15), the treated liquid is typically neutralized before being released into the sewer system. In Japan, human crematoriums equipped to handle large dogs are limited, and this equipment shortage in the pet funeral industry is part of what’s driving the new method — a detail that’s easy to miss from the original article alone.
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