Officials striking gold in human remains
Local governments in Japan have found a new way of supplementing their budgets – by selling gold and other precious metals recovered from the incinerated remains of human bodies at municipal crematoriums.
In some parts of Japan, families typically collect only part of the ashes of their loved ones, with the remainder being disposed of by the crematorium. But with record numbers of Japanese people dying every year, the burden of dealing with remains is increasing. More and more towns and cities are meeting the expense by mining the ashes for the treasure they contain.
As well as gold, silver, palladium and other precious metals from dental fillings, metals can also be recovered from artificial joints and medical implants. They are not visible to the naked eye, and are extracted through processing of the ashes, in a similar way to the refining of ore out of sand. According to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, some local governments are making more than NZ$2 million a year.
Yoshitsugu Kito, a town official in Tajimi, central Japan, which will begin crematorium mining in July, said: "With fewer and fewer children and an ageing society, the town's financial situation is getting difficult. Looking to the future, we want to use the uncollected ashes for the sake of future generations."
Cremation is almost universal in Japan, but the practice is very different from the western one and also varies from region to region. After the incinerated ashes emerge from the furnace, family members pick through the fragments of bone with chopsticks and place them in an urn. In western Japan, often only the largest pieces are taken away, and the rest are left with the crematorium.
There are no clear rules about how the remaining ashes should be handled. Nagoya, Japan's fourth most populous city, auctions off to private companies the right to remove precious metals, before returning the ashes for collective burial. Last year this business generated 225 million yen (NZ$2.4 million).
Tajimi expects to make 10 million yen a year in the same way; the nearby city of Gifu makes 63 million yen. A survey six years ago by Japan's welfare ministry found that 21% of local governments sell crematorium ashes or the metals in them. In eastern Japan, however, where families often collect the remains in full, it is less common.
In an opinion survey in Tajimi, 95% of respondents expressed no objection to the plan, and 70% actively supported it. – The Times