Ryan Grant Little: 0:42

Welcome to another Climate Tech podcast interviews with the people trying to save us from ourselves. Death, famously like taxes, is unavoidable, but we can choose to exercise some agency over what happens to us after we die. I'm not talking about souls. I'm talking about the carbon-based remains we leave behind. In this episode, I spoke with Mallory Greene, founder and CEO of Irene Cremations, about how we can lower our carbon footprint after we're gone. I reached Mallory in Barrie, ontario, canada. Mallory, welcome to the podcast.

Mallory Greene: 1:18

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Ryan Grant Little: 1:20

So how did you get into the funeral business?

Mallory Greene: 1:23

That's always the question I get when people first see me. They're like you funeral services, so I'll bring you back. I went to the University of Guelph. I studied international development and I always thought that I would work in charity or nonprofit. When I graduated I could not get a job, so to me, I didn't have a lot of real-world work experience, but I ended up getting an internship at a tiny fintech company called WealthSimple. The head of marketing at the time recruited me as his marketing intern and I joined and ended up staying for five years and had a really good experience over those five years in marketing, recruiting, hr, people, operations, everything in between.

Mallory Greene: 2:05

And throughout that time there I knew that my ultimate goal was to start my own business and I was looking for an industry that I felt made a lot of sense for me and I realized it was really always in front of me. So my dad's a funeral director, my mom is a hospice nurse, and so it's quite morbid to say that I've grown up around death. It's been a big part of my life. People always ask me what were the dinner table conversations, but ultimately it's just a normalized conversation People talking about their work day, and I think that allowed me to one bring this outlook into an industry that was quite archaic and outdated and could use a bit more conversation in our society, but also just recognize that the industry hadn't changed ever, and so started diving into funeral services, and that's how I agreed and came to be.

Ryan Grant Little: 2:54

I want to pick up on that. Those two terms, archaic and outdated in a moment. One of the stats that you put out is that almost 80% of people would feel financially vulnerable to meet the cost of a $5,000 funeral in Canada, where you're based. That's probably true in many places and also in countries where funerals are kind of more a marker of status, this would be even more pronounced. This isn't surprising to me and I also feel, as you say, the funeral industry hasn't changed a lot and it feels like this is a moment. People are making very expensive decisions at a very vulnerable moment in their lives. Can you talk a little bit about what the industry was or what you've come to and what you're hoping to change about it?

Mallory Greene: 3:38

Yeah for sure. I mean, I think, the reality of funeral services. I read a book a few years ago that talked about how we've hidden death behind the walls of hospitals and funeral homes and because as a society we're so uncomfortable with the topic, the reality is that really the first point that people have the earth are faced with death or have conversations about death is at the time of a funeral, and really they have to make arrangements within 24 to 48 hours and they're being told that it's going to cost them $5,000 to $20,000 for this service and they don't really have a choice, right? I mean, there's not much innovation or accessibility in the industry. It is a very regulated industry so it's hard to break into for new businesses, and so it's like this idea that the funeral industry has really been built off of everyone's fear of death and they've been able to to some extent, take advantage of that Because, once again, people have no choice. Death will occur in their life and they're going to be faced with these high funeral bills and, as you said, in a society today where most people don't even have, I think, $500 in their bank account to cover kind of a sudden expense. And so I think it's.

Mallory Greene: 4:49

The industry, as I said, has been built off of this fear and discomfort with death. And then, kind of you mix in this idea that with the regulation it's very hard to break into. There's definitely some big players that own massive parts of the market and they're able to control overall the pricing of it. And then you also you hit the nail on the head which is the status aspect of it is. We have been made to believe that the more money you spend on someone, the more you loved them. It's like this idea of if you really cared for your grandmother, she deserved the best casket and this massive funeral, and it's just money spent equals love shown. And so Irene is really trying to reverse that one, I think, just by existing in a very regulated industry where we've broken into individual promises and eventually states it's been an uphill battle because there is such a kind of shield on the industry, so it's taken years to break into it.

Mallory Greene: 5:44

But then I think also once again this idea of making people more comfortable talking about death. I find when I tell people about Irene and in my business, everyone has an experience with death, everyone has something to share about grief. There's just no channels to talk about it, and so that's what Irene wants to be this channel to have conversations about it, whether it's pre planning or talking about that grief aspect, and then I think breaking away last is breaking away from that kind of status piece. I believe that it's up to individuals to determine the best way to memorialize people, and so we can give you the tools to understand what your options are and you can make that decision. We do not make that decision for you. With Irene, it's always affordable and accessible, regardless of where you are, and then we kind of give you the tools to do what you will from that point forward.

Ryan Grant Little: 6:30

You made the Forbes Top 30 under 30 this year. Congratulations on that. And interestingly, you're listed in the category of consumer technology, which isn't necessarily where people would expect to find a funeral business. The traditional funeral business, as we know, is also very much bricks and mortar kind of built around funeral homes, but a lot of the core of what Irene is doing is to use technology to shake up the industry. Can you talk about the role that technology plays in this and maybe a little bit about the business model, because you are not delivering funerals yourself, but you're a platform for funeral services.

Mallory Greene: 7:06

Exactly so. We always say that we are a service business enabled by technology, and I think the technology aspect of our business is keeping costs down for our families that we serve. So the easiest way to describe the funeral industry behind the scenes is that there's kind of different facilities that exist to do this 24-7 essential operation to keep society moving forward. So there's funeral homes, there's crematoriums, there's cemeteries and then there's something called transfer services, which essentially are responsible for moving the deceased throughout all of those different buildings. And so what Irene did is we skipped over the need for a physical funeral home these brick and mortar, massive Victorian funeral homes that cost millions of dollars and we went straight to those other facilities like a crematorium and like a transfer service, to leverage things that already exist. So they've been in the industry for decades, if not centuries. They're very trusted by their communities and we work directly with them. Regardless of where someone dies, essentially we can pick them up, bring them into our care and facilitate the cremation. So that's essentially what we've done.

Mallory Greene: 8:14

From a business model perspective, the big difference with Irene is that, instead of, when a death occurs, going in person, making an arrangement face to face, filling out a bunch of paperwork. You can make your arrangement from wherever you are. So we have an online platform. You can go on our website, take down the information you need, fill out the arrangement, pay, sign the contract and then you can go back to being with your loved ones. So that's where the technology aspect of our business really comes into play.

Mallory Greene: 8:41

And then, from what families don't see, on kind of the operational back end side of Irene, we have built our own systems and platforms to make the paperwork process more efficient. So, you know once again, instead of this like pen to paper, filling out all these things registering the death with the province, etc. Our process takes about 10 minutes. It's all automated, very simple, because that is how we keep our costs down and pass those savings on to our families by keeping our processes very efficient. So it's really, I think it's taking this traditionally brick and mortar paper-based business and, just like every other industry, bring it online and make it more accessible to kind of modern day consumers, and I think that's incredibly important in a society where most of us don't live necessarily where our parents are. We are transient, we are all over the place, and so we serve families honestly, globally at this point, because, yeah, I think that the world is changing and funeral services need to change with it.

Ryan Grant Little: 9:41

We're about 15 minutes into our conversation and people are probably checking if they're in the right podcast, wondering why we're talking about funerals in a climate tech podcast, and I want to get to that. What I find most interesting, and why I wanted to have you on the podcast, is one of the offerings you have called aqa-mation. Can you talk a little bit about what that is, please?

Mallory Greene: 10:01

Yes. So it's interesting if you look at overall the trends in funeral services, we are moving towards greener alternatives. So one of them is called aqa-mation. It's legal and I probably about half of the US states and half of our Canadian provinces today. And then there's something also called natural organic reduction or human composting, which is legal in the US right now, and aqa-mation is a very interesting process.

Mallory Greene: 10:27

It's considered a water-based cremation. So basically what it is is it's a stainless steel vessel. It's 95% water, kind of a warm water, 5% lye, so opposite of acid, kind of like the salt compound. The body is basically broken down over hours, four to six hours. What you get back is similar to cremated remains. The big thing here is that it uses about 1-1⁄8 of the energy that flame cremation does. It uses less water than a household does in a single day. It really has this, I think focus on less energy use, no air pollution, lower land usage. It's definitely more environmentally friendly. It's been around since the 1800s, actually used more so for animals at that point. The science community has used it for decades. In, I think, about 2011, it started to become used in funeral services.

Ryan Grant Little: 11:21

You said the remains at the end of the process are like with cremation. Does that mean someone could be putting a physical remains in an urn or something like that?

Mallory Greene: 11:30

Correct. Yes, similar to what you get, once again in funeral services. There's things people want to know and there's things people don't want to know. Just like cremation, what comes out is the bone fragments. Then those are basically pulverized into what are cremated remains. Most people don't know that cremated remains are bones, which is interesting to me.

Ryan Grant Little: 11:49

I didn't know that either.

Mallory Greene: 11:50

Yes, it's actually the bones. All of your organic materials, whether flame or water, have been broken down and basically gone.

Ryan Grant Little: 11:58

Makes sense.

Mallory Greene: 11:58

Then you're getting the bone fragments back. The biggest difference with aquamation, or what they call hydrolyzed, remains more of a powder versus an ash and generally can be a bit whiter versus an ashes of more gray tone. It really depends on the person. But, like you said, it can be put in an urn, they can be spread, they can be everything that you can do with a flame-based cremation remains. You can do with water.

Ryan Grant Little: 12:21

The only time I've seen this in the news was after the death of Desmond Tutu, who, among many other great things, of course, was also a climate activist. He opted to have his remains aquamated I don't know if that's the verb, aquamated for this.

Mallory Greene: 12:35

Yeah, I think aquamated hydrolyzed it can be either.

Ryan Grant Little: 12:38

Yeah, hydrolyzed I think more of like an agricultural dead stock. Let's go with aquamated. Let's go with aquamated. Did the publicity that resulted from Desmond Tutu's aquamation drive a lot of interest? I wonder, are you doing a lot of these right now, or booking them?

Mallory Greene: 12:56

Yeah, it's interesting. So when Desmond Tutu chose aquamation, we had tens of thousands of people on our website. We had a huge spike in traffic and that's because our aquamation blog posts are probably the highest ranking globally speaking, because mostly no one else is talking about it. It's similar to cremation. Decades ago, the funeral industry did not want people to choose cremation. It was a more affordable option. That's how I see aquamation today. No one wants to talk about it or let people know about it.

Mallory Greene: 13:27

We find that because we are still moving towards a place where people start having open conversations about death. When people approach us on what we call an at-need basis, they need our services right away. They've never heard of aquamation and they have to make a decision really quickly. However, they come to us for cremation and then they read about it on our website Aquamation and they make the switch. They say my loved one would have loved this.

Mallory Greene: 13:51

We have very unique situations. I find a lot of parents. If their child has died, they choose Aquamation. It seems like a gentler process for them. We've had firefighters who choose Aquamation because flame cremation doesn't seem right. A lot of Indigenous people choose Aquamation. So it's interesting. There can just be that switch when they read about it and say actually, you know what my loved one would have appreciated this way more. I would like to get to a point where people come to us for Aquamation. So it's still a very small percentage of our families, but as a business we exist to help people understand their options, and it's up to them to decide what to use.

Ryan Grant Little: 14:25

It always struck me that the stupidest thing that we can do with our carbon-based remains is to fill them with chemicals and seal them in concrete and wood and then put them in the earth. But I wonder I mean you probably have some of the stats around this what does that process look like environmentally in terms of, I don't know, soil remediation, co2 relative to cremation or Aquamation?

Mallory Greene: 14:47

Yeah, so I mean, burial definitely is the least green option in funeral services today, and I think that's for a few different reasons. One is the material used. I mean it's generally non-biodegradable materials that are being used, like metal and wood-treated things. It's all non-degrading materials, so that's a huge impact on the earth. And then you mix and embalming fluids, which is seeping into the soil. So that's the first thing. And then I think the second one is just the resource waste the cost of creating these caskets and the concrete that goes in the burial plots. It's a huge resource waste for society, so that goes into it. And then the last one, I think it's just land usage. Right, I mean, we're using so much land for cemeteries and that's really permanent. They can move cemeteries. There's a lot of epic conversations, kind of ethical conversations happening globally of do you start recycling graves Because we're running out of cemetery space, like our population is just too massive to be able to continue to support that. And so, yeah, burial. I think people are taking notice to the impacts of that. Maybe they switch towards green burial. However, the interesting side about green burial is because a lot of us in our older age end up getting metal hippin' plants or anything metal in our body, that green burial actually. It's a horrible option and just as negatively impacted towards the environment.

Mallory Greene: 16:12

So there's kind of like a hierarchy in funeral services. It's burial cremation, green burial as long as you don't have any metal in your body, and then aquamation and natural organic reduction are probably along the same lines. But I mean, in some parts of the world there is no burial right. I know in Japan it's 100% cremation. China historically has been all burials. It's a huge part of their culture. The Chinese government has said we need to go 100% cremation because we just don't have space anymore. And I know in the UK they say in London we won't have cemetery space within 10 years. So I mean, whether people like it or not, these things are changing and even I'll lastly say that with cremation itself, it is becoming increasingly hard to open up a crematorium because of the impact on the environment. So it's very hard to open one in Canada today, and so I think that once again, as a society, we are going to have to be forced to go towards greener alternatives like aquamation and natural organic reduction, because what we're doing right now just cannot sustain.

Ryan Grant Little: 17:13

I was living in India for a while with Zoroastrian roommate and got to learn about that tradition as well of leaving the corpse to be devoured by birds, which I think is actually really cool.

Mallory Greene: 17:26

Yes, there's a name for it, because I know my friends from Tibet and they do it too, but I can never remember the name of it. But yeah, I think one of my biggest goals is to eventually go around the world and just learn about different kind of death customs. I'll just say a quick story that I was speaking to a woman who from Nigeria and she said she was FaceTiming her mom back in Nigeria and she was all dressed up. She was so happy, she was all dressed up and she's like Mom, where are you going? And she's like we're going to a funeral, like it's such a celebration. This person lived until they were 80 something and I was like, wow, that's such an incredible outlook on life and death versus in Western society. It's like, ooh, this is so hidden and scary. So, anyways, that's just my little tidbit.

Ryan Grant Little: 18:08

Except maybe the Irish right. So with the tradition of the wake, which always seemed like a good one to me as well, yeah, true, true. So what does the future look like for Irene? You're in Canada right now. You're expanding to the US, or maybe you're already there. What does world domination look like for Irene, and how long is it going to take?

Mallory Greene: 18:23

You know, if it could happen by tomorrow, that would be great. I think the future of Irene is really to become kind of this trusted resource for all things. End of life Like that is my goal. Cremation is our first product. I think there's so many ways that we can continue to support families after a death and because we're the first interaction they have after a death, we have this. I call it kind of a trauma bond, because if we provide really great services, which I believe we do, they continue to lean on us, especially for that first year of everything that is entailed after a death in the state admin, potentially probate grief support, all of those things right.

Ryan Grant Little: 19:02

And I got passwords and accounts and email. Oh my God.

Mallory Greene: 19:05

Right, it's a nightmare. I think anyone who's ever been an executor is a huge I mean burden. Essentially that's the only word to be used. And so I want to be able to really apply what we've done with cremation and simplifying that funeral process for families to broader things in the end of life space, which I think then naturally leads into pre-planning, because ultimately what we find is when families use us on an at-me basis, that helps them think about their own plans and they say you know what, that was simple and you know what, this is what I would want for my own. And so I think there's just this natural kind of well-rounded end of life piece that Irene wants to tackle. We will expand across North America, maybe Europe, we'll see. And yeah, you know what I want to become the first household name for death care services. I don't think that exists. When you think of death care, there's not one brand you think of, and I believe that it could be Irene.

Ryan Grant Little: 20:01

That would be awesome, and I would love it if you would come to Europe as well. So, irene, is E-I-R-E-N-Eca Correct? You're on LinkedIn as well. If people want to reach out to you, is that the best place?

Mallory Greene: 20:13

Yeah, definitely. You know I always used to make fun of LinkedIn, but I actually now really enjoy LinkedIn Now that Twitter's kind of gone downhill. But Mallory J Green Green with anE on the end, ireneca, as you said, irene means a state of peace. That's often what people ask me. So that's exactly what we want people to feel when they're working with us and navigating those services. But always happy to chat with anyone. All things end of life or tech. I love for people to reach out to me.

Ryan Grant Little: 20:39

Always happy to chat things. All things end of life. I'm sure it's not a term that's heard a lot, but one that probably should be heard more often because it's very important. Agreed. Thanks a lot, mallory, much appreciated.

Mallory Greene: 20:51

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Ryan Grant Little: 20:52

Thanks for listening to another Climate Tech podcast. It would mean a lot if you would subscribe, rate and share this podcast. Get in touch anytime with tips and guest recommendations at helloatclimatetechpodcom. Find me, ryan Grant Little, on LinkedIn. I'll be back with another episode next week. Bye for now.