Promessa Organic AB continues the work to realize the ecologic burial alternative, and the technical development continues as planned.
In Jönköping, work on the first facility is progressing, and in additon to Arvika, Enköping and Oskarshamn that we wrote about in the last Newsletter, Kramfors and Värnamo have also expressed interest in the method.
The Bishops' meeting in Uppsala, which will take place October 19, has invited Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak to talk about ecological burial. A seminar, followed by time for questions, is on the program.
The invitation is a part of the upcoming "Bishops' letter" where casket funeral, cremation and ecological burial will be included.
The number of private individuals who write, call, and send e-mails to Promessa continues to grow, and more and more people decide to choose the ecological burial method.
The frequency of visitors on our homepage/web site is also large, which has given Promessa a top position on the major search engines on the Web. The visitors are predominately companies, private individuals, and educational institutions.
An article in the Swedish evening paper Expressen, on the 7th of June this year, included a questionnaire for the readers, which was also listed on their web edition.
"Do you want an ecological burial when you are dead"?
4,149 people answered the questionnaire during the 24 hours it was on the web. 38 percent answered yes, while 62 percent said no.
When Aftonbladet, the major evening paper, asked what funeral alternative the web-visitors wanted in February 2002 more than 32,000 people answered.
At that time, barely 15 percent were interested in an ecological burial. In less then two years' time the number of people who choose the ecologicalal burial alternative has grown by 23 percentage points.
In July, the magazine "Miljöaktuellt" of the Swedish Environmental Agency, will visit the island of Lyr in order to write a major report with, and about, Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak.
FIAT/IFTAs publication Thanos Magazine has expressed a wish to publish an article about ecological burial in their upcoming autumn edition. The request concerns an informative news text about the method.
We are very pleased with the attention - and the desire from a large and international branch organisation to spread information about the work of Promessa Organic AB.
In the UK, Michael Day, Health Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, published an article about ecological burial, the environmental risks with cremation, and the costs to install extra filters in the crematoriums.
Britain's 242 crematoriums are having to install extra filters at a cost of around £187 million.
In the article, a spokesman for the Home Office said: "We can see no problem with this in terms of burial law."
Dominic Maguire, a spokesman for the National Association of Funeral Directors, said: "Funeral directors will carry out the wishes of the deceased or their families, whatever they are, as long as they are legal and decent, so I don't think there would be a problem with this."
The Church of England also welcomed the new technique. "We definitely support environmentally friendly funerals and there is no reason why they should not be available to people who want them," a spokesman said. "When firm proposals for such burials arrive, we will of course study them closely."
Mike Jarvis, a spokesman for the Natural Death Centre, said: "We approve of the Swedish idea. It is eco friendly and it improves people's choice of what happens to them after they die. Ordinary cremation releases toxic mercury fumes into the environment."
If you want to read the whole article, please contact Promessa and we will e-mail it to you.
The homepage of Promessa is regularly updated.
For further information please visit www.promessa.se
On the homepage, it is possible to order the American author Mary Roach's book Stiff, with the Swedish title Kroppens sällsamma liv efter döden, Likets kulturhistoria.
That's it for this time. We plan to send the next Newsletter at the end of the summer, which we hope everyone will have a chance to enjoy.
Best regards,
Promessa Organic AB
