Alternative Burials Rising in Connecticut Funeral Homes

Connecticut funeral homes are rethinking their floor plans. In some parlors, the physical casket showroom may soon give way to something quite different: alkaline hydrolysis machines that break down a human body into bone fragments and liquid effluent, a process commonly called water cremation. The caskets, meanwhile, move online.

This isn’t a fringe development. More than 67% of those who died in Connecticut last year were cremated, the highest rate the state has ever recorded. Nationally, cremation rates have climbed steadily for years, and Connecticut is tracking well above the national average. The shift is reshaping an industry that has operated on largely the same model for generations.

Jesse Gomes, a licensed funeral director and embalmer who serves as executive director of the Connecticut Association of Funeral Directors and directs Goodwin University’s funeral service mortuary program, sees opportunity rather than disruption in these changes.

“Funeral service providers really embrace these alternative forms of disposition and elaborating on what the definition of traditional funeral service is,” Gomes said. “We think it’s great.”

The alternatives gaining ground go beyond conventional flame cremation. Water cremation, or alkaline hydrolysis, uses water and an alkaline solution to accelerate the body’s natural decomposition. Human composting, which converts remains into roughly a cubic yard of soil over three to four weeks, has also attracted interest. Green burials, which forgo embalming and synthetic materials, appeal to those seeking a lower environmental footprint.

Connecticut’s death certificate categories haven’t caught up to any of this. The state still classifies disposition as burial, entombment, donation or cremation. That means water cremation and human composting get lumped into the cremation column, inflating the figure somewhat.

“Right now, cremation gets the big check mark, which I think is increasing those data more than really what cremation is,” Gomes said. He noted that traditional funeral services aren’t disappearing, even as the numbers suggest otherwise. “By numbers, yes, cremation is on the rise, and it is rising. But that doesn’t mean traditional funeral service and service in general, with funerals and memorialization, is on a decline.”

The distinction matters. A family can still hold a visitation, a religious service, a full memorial gathering and choose cremation. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and Gomes argues that conflating them misrepresents what’s actually happening on the ground.

Dan Ford, president of the National Funeral Directors Association and a Connecticut native who owns funeral homes in Waterbury, Naugatuck and Cheshire, points to public understanding as the driver of this shift.

“The general consensus is that people are becoming more comfortable with cremation, meaning it’s more understood as far as a practice,” Ford said. “People weren’t aware for the longest time that you could have traditional type services in conjunction with cremation.”

Ford has seen the consequences play out in his own family. When his mother-in-law died with instructions to skip services and simply be cremated, the absence of any formal gathering left a mark. The family eventually chose to hold a memorial, as CT Mirror reported.

That story captures something professionals in this field return to repeatedly: disposition and memorialization are separate decisions, and families sometimes conflate them in ways they later regret. The body’s final form matters less, many argue, than whether the living get a structured opportunity to grieve together.

Connecticut’s funeral industry now has to serve customers who arrive with more options and more opinions than at any previous point. Some want the greenest possible process. Some want simplicity and low cost. Some want a full traditional service with cremation at the end. The industry’s challenge is building infrastructure, and a business model, flexible enough to accommodate all of it.

The physical changes inside funeral homes signal how seriously providers are taking that challenge. Moving casket inventory online to free up floor space for hydrolysis equipment is a small logistical decision with a larger symbolic meaning: the industry isn’t mourning the old model. It’s making room for what comes next.