December 2006
It is interesting to observe the lack of need for marketing efforts. Interested individuals as well as all levels of the burial industry are frequently contacting Promessa to give lectures and answers to all questions due to the huge world-wide interest in the concept of Promession.
Since 2001, Promessa Organic AB is continuously working with "pre-marketing", providing all interested parties with information, and travelling the world around (having been invited by organizations and companies).
The reason for the huge interest for this third burial option does vary from nation to nation, but the most common and used word in connection with the Promessa concept is appealing. This is remarkable indeed! It is probably the first time in history that death has become something being described as appealing. In that light, there has never been a better perspective for a paradigm shift within burial; death has now become possible to discuss with little or no anxiety.
New Cooperation with Promessa United AG
In early 2006, Promessa Organic AB, in Sweden (PO), engaged a partnership to strengthen the organisation and management of the project. The organization was fortified by the creation of a new company, Promessa United AG (P.U), with head office in Hamburg, Germany.
The very strong Promessa patents, describing the biological and technical applications, are today owned and secured by the Swedish Promessa Foundation (PF), with an exclusive license to Promessa United AG for using them.
The prime milestone, for the established Promessa United AG (PU), is to have a pilot promator up and running in the first half of 2007.
A launch (in Stockholm) for the promator will in due time be announced, to let the huge number of interested parties, from all over the world, come and see the tangible equipment.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed in South Korea. The MoU expresses the need for 100 promators during the coming 10 years.
A lot of attention from Promessa (PO) has been put into the dust coffin design, both from a biotechnological and esthetical point of view. The result is a totally new creation, now patented for the unique properties aimed for the conceptual thinking in connection with Promession.
To be able to comply with the possible demand of having a small cremator
added to the Promessa Concept, Promessa United AG (PU) signed a contract with
an innovative cremator manufacturer in The Netherlands for the development and
manufacturing of a “Mini Cremator”.
A more environmentally conscious approach to combustion without mercury and
dioxin emission in a cremation process is technically possible with this new
“Mini Cremator”.
PU also has written a letter of intent (LOI) with a Swedish crematorium for delivering the Promessa Concept. In accordance with the agreement, the delivery of the Promator and the “Mini Cremator” will take place in the 4th quarter of 2007.
Awards
Promessa Foundation was this spring, for the second time nominated for an award from the Green Organization in England. This year Promessa received a nomination as one of the first international “Green Heroes for best environmental practice”.
International contacts
In the end of June, Promessa (PO) attended the annual Idea City seminar, in
Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Susanne was invited as one of 50 speakers that gave
lectures over the three day event. Moses Znaimer, emcee as well as founder of
the project, gave Promessa VIP status.
Many spin-off effects resulted from Susanne’s presentation at Idea City in the
burial industry. As well, the media made use of Promessa's presence in Eastern
Canada.
In July, Promessa was honoured by being visited by a Chinese Sophie Prize winner (2000), likewise Environmental Advisor, Sheri Xiaoyi Liao, President of the Chinese organization Global Village of Beijing (Beijing Organizing Committee for The Games of the XXIX Olympics).
The Federation of British Cremation Authorities (FBCA), invited Promessa for
a presentation at a seminar, end of September, in "Great Malvern", south of
Birmingham, UK.
This was a well organized, elegant and well visited seminar, with lectures
describing the burial industry and burial traditions from a wider perspective
and from most different angles, with cremation in focus.
Promessa’s dedicated Crewe and Nantwich Council Borough representatives, Cemetery and Crematorium Manager Mary Slinn and Executive Director David Marren, who attended the seminar, after the Promessa lecture of Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, distributed a form to measure the interest from crematoria in UK. An significant number immediately acknowledged by signing.
The Secretary of FBCA, Duncan McCallum, was elected to become a coordinator in Crewe and Nantwich Advisory for promession in the UK.
Our dedicated Crewe and Nantwich Council Borough representatives, Cemetery and Crematorium Manager Mary Slinn and Executive Director David Marren, also attended the seminar. We took the opportunity for a chat in order to update one another. Their web page is very well advertising promession and is frequently updated.
On the way back to Sweden, Susanne and Peter Wiigh-Mäsak were also fortunate enough to be able to synchronise a meeting at London Stansted with B. Build Art. (U.P.E) M.Arch (Prof.) Lodewyk Coetzee, who as a treatise for his M.Arch (Prof.) degree (November 2006), has made a plan for a promatorium in an old part of the city Port Elizabeth (a city in South African Context 1,5mil people), where he also lives. He is a good example of how the Promessa concept attracts different disciplines within e.g. design, art or architecture, to create an expression of the individual ingredients that makes promession appealing.
A very traditional religious group of people, native from India, called
Parses, with an 8000 year long tradition of laying their dead ancestors on
so-called towers of silence, to be taken care of by vultures, have asked
Promessa to help out, because environmental malpractice has made vultures
rare.
In this perspective, being asked to help the Parses uphold their traditions
using the concept of promession, makes "humility" seem a weak word; it is
bigger than we can understand.
In November Promessa went to Canada once again. The Memorial Society of
British Columbia, with approximately 200,000 members, invited and sponsored the
trip, for enabling a lecture.
Executive Director Walter Johanson explained to us his purpose of inviting
Promessa: "it was not for negotiating any business relations, only for
information purposes, to see if promession could be an option for MSBC
members."
Following the presentation, many people from the audience told Susanne
Wiigh-Mäsak how much they appreciated the presentation and the Promessa
message.
Executive Director Walter Johanson declared, "Susanne’s presentation was clear
and persuasive".
Skeptics were turned into believers, and the Memorial Society looks forward to
further developments in Promessa.
Promessa also took the opportunity to meet and undertake additional planning
with LEES+Associates, Promessa Ambassadors in Canada.
Lees & Associates (L&A), is a landscape architecture in Vancouver,
BC. Their work in cemetery design, planning and green burial is a perfect fit
with Promessa and we are very pleased to enjoy a collaboration with Erik Lees
and his team. L&A has undertaken several studies in Western Canada in order
to better understand burial preferences. Their recent findings regarding
Promessa have met with a positive response from nearly one third of residents
in three different communities.
Legislation
The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, has made an investigation concerning infectious disease risks in connection with promession. Their conclusion is that no increased risk can be foreseen, compared to traditional burial.
Under the headline “ZERO MERCURY, Key issues and policy recommendations for the EU Strategy on Mercury”, from December 2005, “The European Environmental Bureaus” indicates only promession as a means to avoid the mercury emissions from European crematoria.
In The UK a demand from the EU commission is to halve their mercury
emissions in all their 250 crematorias before 2012. There is an unmistakable
interest in Promession from a significant number of authorities and branch
organizations in Great Britain.
The burial laws have been adapted to the Promessa concept in a couple of
countries, as for example in regions of South Africa and Germany.
The UK does not have any legal restrictions for the implementation of
Promession. But there is a strive for a written clarification.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said in 2005; the Church of England is to embark
on green reformation and proclaimed that "greenness is next to godliness".
Press / TV / Internet
In September, the Estonian Television made a documentary shooting about Promessa for the popular native program “Pealtnägija”.
Spontaneous and constructive productions arise as an inspiration and reflection of the description of Promession on the web, the latest being a short video clip, viewable on YouTube.
Crewe and Nantwich Council Borough web page advertises promession quite well, and is frequently updated.
Promessa Organic AB
