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A recent conversation with a Cypriot who was a very good friend of my late father has left me wondering what the is best, ie best for the planet, method of dealing with my body after I’m gone. Burial and cremation are the two most obvious choices but is there any other ways? I’ve seen something on the net about tree pods but don’t know if it’s practical or even legal in this country.
Leaving you out for the crows, magpies, eagles, buzzards and kites.
Probably not legal.
I thought this was something else entirely.
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I'm going for woodland burial. I reckon that the worms and bugs will make good use of me.
Under the patio or to that 'nice' local butcher.
Honestly, the environmental impact of a cremation will be a drop in the ocean compared to the impact a persons whole life will have caused.
Water cremation, soon to be available in the UK AFAIK
[edit - beaten to it]
fwiw, someone's ashes aren't really ashes, it's the non-combustible parts that are ground up. So what you get back after the above is essentially the same.
I posted a while back about my neighbour whose organ and tissue donation had helped many others.....that's my intent as far as possible; I don't really care whether i'm burnt, buried or dissolved, I just want there to be as little of me that it's done to as possible as the rest of me will have found use elsewhere.
Stuffed and put in the natural history museum.
Composted ( having been ground up first) for plant / crop nutrition would be best I think. Woodland whole body burial second.
My mother wants to be composted. anyone know where I can get a loan of an industrial mincer?
There’s a woodland burial site just outside of Corsham, which looks rather nice, although there is a family grave in a tiny little churchyard in a little village near where my family on my dad’s side have lived going back to around the mid 1700’s that I wouldn’t mind being buried in. My mum’s ashes are now with my step-dad’s in a crematorium outside of Melksham, and my dad’s are in a different crematorium in Bath, and to be honest I don’t really have much in the way of close relatives anymore, just cousins, and my brother. I don’t think anyone much is going to miss me, tbh, and I always stop in Slaughterford churchyard when I walk around there, because it’s such a nice, peaceful little place to sit.
Just pickle me and stick me in an office at my old work, see how long it takes anyone to notice
I listened to an entire radio show about this a couple of years ago. Something like the link below.
There’s a fair few options… but I don’t remember what the conclusion was.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-04-27/green-death-funeral-environment/10994330
Viking long boat, set fire to with a flaming arrow and pushed out to sea?
I want my remains to be scattered at my favourite local beauty spot. I don’t however intend on being cremated.
My mate is buried under a tree in a botanical garden.
A peaceful place to visit.
Edit: bad timing...
My mother wants to be composted. anyone know where I can get a loan of an industrial mincer?
it’s a beautiful moment at the end of the funeral where the coffin glides away through the curtain and the assembled mourners solemnly don their ear defenders
Sky burial, the red kites in the Chilterns will make a meal of me.
Put in the green waste bin.
<p style="text-align: center;">Food waste bin surely?</p>
Trebuchet in to the sea
Don’t lay me in some gloomy churchyard shaded by a wall
Where the dust of ancient bones has spread a dryness over all,
Lay me in some leafy loam where, sheltered from the cold
Little seeds investigate and tender leaves unfold.
There kindly and affectionately, plant a native tree
To grow resplendent before God and hold some part of me.
The roots will not disturb me as they went their peaceful way
To build the fine and bountiful, from closure and decay.
To seek their small requirements so that when their work is done
I’ll be tall and standing strongly in the beauty of the sun.
Our green bin is garden and food waste.
Perfect end for my remains.
Spend the money saved on doing something nice.
Trebuchet in to the sea
How coincidental, that's how I'd like my final journey too, and I was only describing it to my missis as we sat at a nice seaside cafe yesterday.
Her opinion was why wait until you die!
Colin Furze has just the thing I reckon.
Buried vertically with an old plant pot to cover the head.
I have 2 wishes when I die
1) I'd like my remains to be scattered around Disney World
2) I don't want to be cremated
My mum was burnt. Have no intention of holding onto her ashes, so that had fallen to my sister.
Our grandma was buried in a wicker coffin in a woodland. Doesn't look at all like a graveyard. It's nice.
My mum's cousin was cremated & her ashes sprinkled in her favourite field, then the sheep came bounding over for a feeding frenzy, which lightened the mood.
Composted ( having been ground up first) for plant / crop nutrition would be best I think.
You really have to remember to rinse the strawberries from the 'pick your own' farm before eating them...
Mrs TJ sshes are in several friends veg plots. Carbon cycle and all that. Also I planted some apple trees in her memory - so you dig a hole, chuck in a bag of manure and plant the tree. So MrsTJ is in a hole full of shit in a pals garden
Personally I would like to be cremated, the ashes put into a big firework and exploded over a crowd
https://www.leedam.com/locations/pembrokeshire/
We have this near us. It seems a pretty good way to be got rid of.
Buried vertically with an old plant pot to cover the head.
Tendril-fragrant honeysuckle sucked and honey-babed, close to the ancient limestone walls of Rawlinson; and Florrie, awake, bayonetted her turkey head from its privy orifice. It was a lovely morning: gorgeous beyond imagining where brassy whores of winter-depression-fierce daffodils, blaring yellow-white reveille, and croci, gingering the lawns in tessellate Performing-Right-Society. No need for wellies, Florrie, shawl about her sparrow shoulders, took the interminable beige thing she was knitting into the garden.
Earth, having sipped its cold manna, merely "pssst... pssst..." and crisped beneath upon-toed fastidious feet. Worms and wigglies slumbered deep, and stirred not a bit, as didn't dead Mr. Cumberpatch who, like all Rawlinsons or favoured servants, was buried upright in the Victory Garden.
"No sense in wasting space", said Henry, "bags of calcium and goodness in the buggers. You should've seen my sprouts when Baron Tostoff, the ruined Pole, kicked it."
When I die, I intend it to be spectacular enough that there won't be much body left to dispose of.
My Grandad was a merchant navy engineer. He was cremated and scattered in the Atlantic of the coast of France. Apparently they circle the ashes three times in the boat when they do it… not sure if that’s a French thing or not.
You could do the Jeremy Bentham thing of being stuffed, mounted in a glass display case and then just go back to work. He's still goes to board meetings over 180 year after he died.
My mother wants to be composted. anyone know where I can get a loan of an industrial mincer?
Thats WCA fulfilling TJ's mothers wishes moments before fulfilling his own 🙂
🙂
best way is to pop the body into an ERF and make some electricity, or mince the body and add the pulp to an AD plant for gas generation and energy.
I'm actually involved in some R&D with alkaline hydrolysis from a biological safety and environmental emission point of view (aka wet cremation or water burial)
still seems rather wasteful of useful resource seeing as once the "us" as departed all that's left is a meatsuit of potential energy (bacon scented tallow candles anyone?)
@maccruiskeen That's an amateur. Professionals freeze the body first as it goes through the chipper cleanly with no spatter!
As suggested above - in the grand scheme of things the hour or so you cremated for is a tiny proportion of your time on earth - I'd image its footprint is more than trumped by the travel arrangements of the people who come to see you off. Theres much more you could do alive than you could achieve in that afternoon after you've died
There might be alternative ways for turning remains into something more portable than a coffin but I think it's probably easier to take steps like recover the heat from the process for other purposes. British Sugar used to heat greenhouses with the surplus heat from its production line to grow tomatoes - now it grows medical cannibis. The old BBC television centre had its own power station (powered by rolls Royce jet engines) and surplus heat was pumped around the local housing estate as a district heating system.
Crematorium and Sauna maybe?
Body, organ and tissue donation | Human Tissue Authority (hta.gov.uk)
https://www.hta.gov.uk/guidance-public/body-organ-and-tissue-donation
add the pulp to an AD plant for gas generation and energy.
Mmm, interesting.
I know someone who has one of these …..
He also has a pig farm 🤔
Definitely don’t lend it to Taylor Schabusiness…
You could do the Jeremy Bentham thing of being stuffed, mounted in a glass display case and then just go back to work. He’s still goes to board meetings over 180 year after he died.
I was thinking of this too. He doesn’t really get wheeled out though and his actual head was removed and put on a plinth.
his actual head was removed and put on a plinth.
The body is in a display case and was supposed to go to meetings but it's a bit of a palaver - his skeleton is arriticulated and poseable but he'd been bolted to the chair. At one point in time his head went a bit nasty so its been replaced with a wax replica and now his real head in in a box and for convenience its his head that gets taken to meetings when contractually obliged and they only wheel out the rest of him for special occasions.
Put in the green waste bin.
Green bin you day?
Soylent green
The body is in a display case and was supposed to go to meetings
Yeah, when I was a student I used to take prospective undergraduate students on tours and this was one of the things you definitely didn’t miss 🤣
Not even attempting to answer the OP, but...
There's a tiny island called Dove Island, which lies just off St Vincent, and on the tiny island there's a white cross. The remains of a wealthy local are vertically buried/interred inside the cross.
My mother wants to be composted. anyone know where I can get a loan of an industrial mincer?
I deleted my earlier Fargo Gif because of the post it (accidentally) appeared under, but go watch Fargo (the film) it presents a DIY solution to your question...
I might donate mine to science - saves the cost of the funeral!
Hang on, so that water cremation thing dissolves everything except the bones, which are then cremated?
What a wasted opportunity! Your relatives get the option of a full skeleton? Great 🙂
Hang it in a cupboard or something, to scare visitors. Endless possibilities for amusement.
When I die, I intend it to be spectacular enough that there won’t be much body left to dispose of.
I thought you were going to die by gradually cutting bits of yourself off or breaking them over many years?
Either way there won’t be much body left to dispose of 😉
My only worry about water cremation is the bad chemicals.
I'm sure there was somewhere that was doing hot composting which broke the bodies down over about three months, just not sure it's allowed in the UK
We have just buried my wife's aunt this week, can honestly say it was best funeral i have been to, they own a large farm here in Norfolk, and she was buried (with permission) in her favourite wood on the farm, the hearse brought casket to bottom of their long drive, where it was then placed on back of tractor and trailer to the woods, all the guys that worked on the farm were banned from wearing suits and told to wear their overalls, service was non-religious and was mostly people just telling stories, followed by a BBQ/ buffet that everyone contributed to, a lot of beer, music and more stories.
Seemed a good way to be remembered.
Ask the living how they wish to dispose of your body, because you have no say in this matter once you are dead, kaput. You can request whatever you wish now but once you are dead that's it. They can do as they wish with your corpse. i.e. the most economical and convenient way to say goodbye to you. All the methods of disposing body have already been mentioned above so let the living choose.
However, if you belief in afterlife my advice is to wear your favourite clothing, shirt, trousers whatever just before you take your last breath. Coz when you realise that there is an afterlife your spirit will want to visit the living in their dreams, you will be presenting yourself with whatever you wear just before your last breath. i.e. if you died in hospital wearing the hospital robe, that is how you will look like immediately in their dream. If you died wearing nothing that's how you will present yourself in their dream. Most cases, in my experience of the dead people visiting my dream (they like to visit me if they know me previously to report their death or tell me stuff their children did not want others to know ... but now I know LOL!), would wear the same clothing before their last breath and I usually like to confirm my information with their love ones respectfully. (but for my own relatives and love ones I/we just treat them like normal and take the mickey out of them coz death is no taboo to us/me).
Sky burial, the red kites in the Chilterns will make a meal of me.
I'm imagining that as being like a burial at sea, except the boat is replaced with a Cessna and the kites have approximately 20 seconds to eat you before you hit the M40. 😀
Just make sure you don't get run over & have no choice on the matter 😳
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-66256705
After removing any organs/parts for transplants or research theres probably not much left to get rid of.
Hang on, so that water cremation thing dissolves everything except the bones, which are then cremated?
Most of the bodies from the Napoleonic war rotted in situ and then the bones were shipped to Scotland to be made into fertiliser...
I might donate mine to science – saves the cost of the funeral!
Why science? Science gets plenty of bodies already. Why not donate it to the arts? Your corpse could be just what some budding ventriloquist needs to get their foot on the showbiz ladder.
Most of the bodies from the Napoleonic war rotted in situ and then the bones were shipped to Scotland to be made into fertiliser…
The 'I'll grind their bones to make my bread' line in Jack and Beanstalk harks back to referring to our war-dead of the time as having 'given their bones to make your bread'
I’d been oblivious to the ‘bone mills’ and their appetite for battlefield leftovers.
Also I read in ‘when we cease to understand the world’ that the insatiable appetite for bone was a reason for raiding the tombs of Egypt.
insatiable appetite for bone was a reason for raiding the tombs of Egypt.
we ate a lot of mummies as a health food supplement but we also made paint out of them and you’ve probably seen paintings painted with pigment made from the corpses in your local museum and art galleries. You could buy ‘Mummy Brown’ in art materials shops up until the 1960s
so bugger giving your body to science, donate it to Windsor and Newton
Re the Waterloo dead, didn’t they take their teeth to use as dentures?
I kind of fancy being used as a very realistic crash test dummy, see if my mangled corpse can advance life saving technologies in some way.
best way is to pop the body into an ERF and make some electricity, or mince the body and add the pulp to an AD plant for gas generation and energy.
Aquamation, or water cremation several other names for it...expensive and takes a long time per body but is at the mo.ent the greenest option, i think
Ran a survey receantly, based on thoughts of what do you want
80% had no interest in the most environmental option, what is cheapest was top followed by woodland burial, but not popular with land owners, however this is apparently not particularly green...
not sure on the full ins and outs but the Iccm spoke briefly about it...i wont try to explain as im sure folk on here will no more on the subject
Daftest result was 70% have plans for the funeral but have not told anyone what they are.
Not a massive survey i must add but interesting non the less