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What this covers
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A USDA backed solar installation and a flame free cremation process sit behind the company’s third North Carolina site.
CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina, United States – September 8, 2026 – Endswell Funeral Home, which is working toward carbon neutral operation of its cremation and burial services, has opened a third North Carolina location at 601 W. Rosemary St., Unit 109, in Chapel Hill.
Endswell Funeral Home is the only provider of aquamation in North Carolina’s Triangle region. Aquamation, also known as alkaline hydrolysis or water cremation, uses water and alkaline chemistry in place of flame.
According to co-owner and co-founder Hunter Beattie, the process does not release toxic or carcinogenic gases and produces no carbon emissions. Conventional flame cremation, by contrast, requires sustained high temperature and burns fossil fuel to reach it.
The Solar Installation
The company received a grant through the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program, a scheme that supports renewable energy and efficiency work at rural small businesses. The grant covers half the cost of a 150,000 dollar solar installation.
The stated purpose is to bring the company’s aquamation and green burial services to carbon neutral operation, so that the electricity the process draws is matched by generation on site.
That combination, a flame free process powered by on site solar, is unusual in the funeral sector, where environmental practice has historically focused on burial rather than cremation.
Conservation Burial
The second strand of the company’s environmental work is burial. Green or natural burial places a body without embalming chemicals, in a biodegradable casket or shroud, so decomposition proceeds without barrier materials.
Endswell assists with the majority of natural burials at Bluestem Conservation Cemetery, a conservation burial ground that began operating in 2022, the same year the funeral home was founded. Conservation burial grounds pair interment with permanent land protection, meaning the ground is held undeveloped rather than maintained as conventional cemetery lawn.
How the Company Started
Hunter Beattie and Veronica Penn Beattie founded the business in Hillsborough, North Carolina in 2022. Their backgrounds were in the nonprofit and renewable energy sectors, and neither had worked in the funeral industry.
The decision followed Hunter Beattie reading, near a Carrboro cemetery in early 2022, that Archbishop Desmond Tutu had chosen aquamation. Within two weeks the couple had resolved to build the business.
“We came out of renewable energy, so the emissions question was the first thing we looked at, not the last,” said Hunter Beattie, co-owner and co-founder. “What surprised us was that families were asking about it before we ever raised it. The demand was there. The provision was not.”
The Chapel Hill Site
The new location is a standalone, staffed building with its own signage. It offers aquamation, green and natural burial, traditional cremation and traditional burial, along with preplanning appointments and memorial services.
The company’s other addresses, 407 Meadowlands Dr. in Hillsborough and 116 Crutchfield St. in Durham, are unaffected and stay open, drawing on the same staff.
“People assume choosing something greener means choosing something colder, or more complicated, or more expensive,” said Veronica Penn Beattie, co-owner and co-founder. “It is none of those things. Being able to offer it a few minutes from someone’s home instead of half an hour away changes who gets to make that choice.”
Coverage reaches Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Durham, Mebane and Pittsboro, with staff contactable at any time of day or night.
How the Two Processes Compare
Flame cremation operates at sustained temperatures in the region of 1,400 to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, reached and held using natural gas or propane. The energy demand is concentrated and the combustion produces emissions that must be managed.
Alkaline hydrolysis works differently. The body is placed in a vessel with water and an alkaline solution, then held at elevated temperature and, in some systems, pressure, for a period of hours. The result is bone mineral, which is processed and returned to the family in the same way cremated remains are, and a sterile liquid.
Because the process is driven by heated water rather than combustion, its energy demand is electrical. That is the property that makes a solar installation meaningful. Electricity can be generated on site. Burnt gas cannot be.
Why the Sector Has Been Slow
Environmental practice in death care has historically concentrated on burial, where the questions are visible and physical: embalming chemicals, hardwood and metal caskets, concrete vaults, and the fertiliser and water that conventional cemetery lawn requires.
Cremation has been treated as the greener default largely because it avoids those inputs, and its own energy profile has attracted less scrutiny. Providers offering a flame free alternative remain scarce, which is why a single facility can serve a region the size of the Triangle.
About Endswell Funeral Home
A North Carolina, United States funeral home established in 2022, Endswell Funeral Home is owned by Hunter Beattie and Veronica Penn Beattie. It is the Triangle’s only aquamation facility, and also provides green and natural burial, cremation and traditional funerals from Hillsborough, Durham and Chapel Hill.