Going “green” has been a way of living. Now it’s also a way of dying.

A Belfast funeral home owner has started offering cremation without the carbon emissions.

The process, called alkaline hydrolysis, breaks down the body into chemical components, leaving behind a brown liquid and a pile of brittle bones.

Direct Cremation of Maine in Searsport had the system installed this week, making it the second commercial crematory in the country to offer the service.

Mark Riposta, owner of Direct Cremation and Riposta Funeral Home, said the business decison was a no-brainer.

“Look at every piece of advertising you have out there today. ‘These are green lights. This is green cleaner, green hand soap. This is green toilet paper,'” he said. “This is the future.”

The process, which includes heating 50 gallons of water to 208 degrees and circulating it for 12 hours through a casket-sized steel vessel, requires about a tenth of the amount of energy that incineration does, according to Joe Wilson, who sold the system to Riposta.

Riposta likens it to an accelerated version of the natural decomposition process.

“If you buried someone in the ground, in 20 years, you’d get exactly back what you get in 12 hours,” he said.

It starts with placing a body into a cylindrical steel basket that slides into a tube-shaped machine, Wilson said. A lye-like substance and hot water are added to dissolve the body into a brown effluent that contains sugars, salt, soap, peptides and amino acids.

Carbon dioxide is added to the liquid to lower the pH, so it can be safely discarded into the sewer system, Wilson said. The bones that remain are then dried and ground into ash.

Wilson’s company, Indiana-based Bio-Response Solutions, is one of four manufacturers of alkaline hydrolysis systems, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

The process has gained popularity for the disposal of animal carcasses and bodies donated to science. The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota has been using alkaline hydrolysis since 2006.

The first funeral home owner to purchase Wilson’s machine was Jeff Edwards, of Ohio, who processed 19 bodies about a year ago before he was shut down by the state’s health department because there were no relevant regulations in place, Wilson said.

He said Ohio legislators are amending their laws to permit the process, and he expects Edwards’s machine to be back in operation this summer.

Last fall, Florida funeral home Anderson-McQueen installed an alkaline hydrolysis system made by a Scottish company, Resomation Ltd.

By all accounts, it’s the only commerically operated system in the country — or has been until this week.

Riposta shouldn’t run into a regulatory barrier, as Maine legislators already have addressed the issue.

The state is one of eight that changed its laws to allow alkaline hydrolysis.

New Hampshire banned the process in 2008, after a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese described it as “undignified,” according to reports by ABC News and other media.

Lynn Cornfield, who issues air permits to crematories for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, said Maine decided to change its laws after a series of issues arose at crematories in other states.

The state’s new crematory rules, adopted in 2009, expanded the definition of cremation to include processes other than “using direct flame or heat” – a tiny tweak that’s made all the difference to Riposta.

Because of the $150,000 equipment cost, Riposta is tacking on $1,000 for the specialized service, which he’s calling “natural green cremation.” A traditional cremation costs $995.

A few families already have signed up their loved ones for the service, said Riposta, who expects to run a body through the machine for the first time today or Friday.

At least one of Riposta’s competitors doesn’t see the new venture taking off.

“It’s basically like bringing people to dissolve their tissue … People aren’t going to like it,” said Chris Stilkey, owner of Lighthouse Crematory in Freeport.

Stilkey said he looked into the techonolgy a couple of years ago and wasn’t convinced that it was better for the environment than incineration.

“It don’t believe it’s that green,” he said, noting that propane is used to heat the water.

Cornfield, from the DEP, said she considers traditional crematories to have a “very, very slight” effect on the environment and hasn’t seen proof that alkaline hydrolysis has less of an effect.

“If you look at the facts, I can’t say that one appears any greener than the other,” she said. “This is an alternative, and it seems to be quite fine.”

Letting people know what after-life options they have is a good thing in the eyes of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maine, said its president, Delene Perley of Windham.

“We’re interested in how this might work for people,” she said.

Perley said some people she’s talked to about alkaline hydrolysis haven’t reacted well to the idea of their dead body dissolving.

“They go, ‘Oh, gross,'” she said. Personally, Perley doesn’t think it’s sounds all that bad.

“How is that any different from burning?” she said.

Riposta said it’s proven that, when given the choice, there are people who will choose to do what’s better for the environment. He doesn’t see why it will be any different for his product.

“There’s something about doing the right thing for the Earth we live in,” he said. “They feel good about it.”