Ask Lemmy

Donate your body to science. My mother did that. She used to joke that they would put her body in a car trunk in the desert, or some other location, and see what time and decay did so they could measure the process. For all I know, that's literally where her body is right now. They also do other experiments. Then, after a few years, they return cremated remains to you.

Try to find an institution that will take your body. I've looked into it. There's a place in a neighboring state that will take mine, but if I die more than 100 miles from them, someone will need to arrange to transport the body to them. There's not much more to it for me.

Edit to alter link to a better site

A big part of your question hinges upon where you call home. Some countries have strickt restrictions.

My son is in his water bottle. Never bought an urn from the crematorium.

Direct cremation is the absolute chespest way to handle it. They'll try to sell you a fancy urn, and may even say it's illegal to use another type of container, but you could literally do what they did in The Big Lebowski and use a coffee can if you wanted. The guy who invented Pringles had his ashes put into a Pringles can. The ashes themselves come in a sealed plastic bag, anyway.

My mom's are just in a wooden box I made for her when I was in highschool woodshop.

You can shop around for crematoriums near you. Most of them in the US pick up the body as part of their fee. $300-800 to cremate a body. They mail you the ashes in a plastic bag. Some will offer urns, but that's an extra charge you can skip. Most states don't consider burying ashes the same as burying a body. Different laws. You can prepay, and have a card in your wallet with the company's info on it in case someone stumbles upon your body.

My wife and I have spoken about what we want done. My plan for her is to cremate her, then go to a local nursery and find a nice hearty, long living, low-maintenance flowering tree she would have liked and plant her and the tree in my back yard.

The cheapest method is to abandon the body. People die without family all the time and the State has a method to dispose of unclaimed corpses. Cost $0

If you really want to stick it to the funeral industry, and you're including crematoriums and all other aspects in that, I think the only option is burial at sea.

Put it in your will that you want your friends and family to go on a deep-sea fishing cruise. Specify they must bring you along, and once they reach the approved and legal dumping location and have you naked and weighted so you sink, they can raise their glasses, make a toast, and pitch you over the side.

Meant to include this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_at_sea

Where I live the cheapest is to donate your body to science but it depends entirely on if the local university needs bodies or has storage capacity at the moment of death.

https://www.greenmatters.com/p/eco-friendly-burial-methods

https://www.cremation.green/green-burial-options/

https://canadianfunerals.com/guide-to-green-burial-in-canada/

https://environment.co/eco-friendly-funeral-options/

Should get you started.

Donation to a hydraulic press and/or hispeed cam YouTube channel

2 things that piss off the funeral industry

1. Aquamation/water cremation/alkaline hydrolysis
2. Human composting

Both are legal in my state. You should join the fight if they aren't legal where you are.

Both are cheaper than burial. With aquamation you get back a bag of cremains just like with cremation. The only difference is instead of fire they boil you in an alkaline solution.

With composting it turns people into literal soil. You can take that back or donate it to a charity that is repairing a forest.

I second the Lemmy user who suggested Caitlyn Doughty and the Order of the Good Death.

Left in the woods for dog walkers to find.

Donate your body for medical students to dissect

I want my body dumped on the front steps of my least favorite living politician.

When they return my body to my next of kin they will dump it back on the politicians' doorstep

I agree with this sentiment. It's insane to me that people need to cough up thousands of dollars to see their loved one off. It's so wrong, although I do accept that funeral providers can't simply give away their services for free. I would support a taxation that had a provision for funerary needs for all citizens. Universal death care. I mean, we're all gonna die. It's not like you can say "oh boo hoo I'm paying all this tax just for some other cunt to die on my dime??" because your day will come soon enough and you don't want your family having to blow their savings on putting you in a hole.

I wanna be harvested for organs like a Chinese dissident, and whatever is left can be mulched and used to grow trees or something.

But if we're talking "cheapest", in the UK and Ireland there's a pauper's grave thing where the state will put you in a very basic grave and with a very basic marker. Not sure if you need to be poor to qualify, or if they'll just do it when asked.

Do you have access to a woodchipper?

Regardless of the final resting place after the funeral - DON'T EMBALM. They'll pressure your family into embalming to 'ensure the dead look their best on the day of the funeral', but refrigeration does the exact same thing. You might think it's more 'dignified', but just do a quick google at what the process entails. It's ALL smoke and mirrors, and I'd rather have people at my funeral actually understand what my body is doing at that point - not the image of what a 'body at rest' looks like from Hollywood.

My family has some experience with this

My mom's cousin was a wonderful person, her husband, however, was an enormous piece of shit in just about every way you could imagine.

She got sick and died, he never had a funeral for her.

Then he up and died maybe a year or so later.

My mom was still listed as the executrix of their wills, so it fell on her to decide what to do with him.

And she decided on nothing. Let the coroner haul his body away and never claimed it.

After a while they cremate the remains, they hold onto them for a while to see if any other next of kin wants to claim them, then after a while they bury or scatter them somewhere if no one does.

I'm sure the exact specifics of how that all works varies a bit from place to place, but in general that's gonna be an option. They can't exactly force you to pay for a funeral you don't want, and the local government has some plan on dealing with bodies no one wants to pony up for a funeral for (otherwise there'd be a lot of corpses of homeless people and such piling up in a freezer somewhere)

Water cremation can be pretty cheap IF it's legal where you are

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cremation

My body is going to a medical school, to be used for student dissection. Once they are finished with it, it will be cremated. My relatives can have the ashes if they want, otherwise it will be disposed of. My name will go up on a plaque in a special memorial garden. It was pretty easy to organise, just a matter of signing consent forms with a witness. Family are ok with it.

There's a chance my body will be rejected - infectious, too mangled, whatever - and in that case it's bounced back to family to deal with. I favour forest burial wrapped in an old bedsheet.

I think the cheapest way here (the Netherlands) is around €750-900 and you are burned in a (fairly strong) paper bag or cardboard coffin I think.

But to be fair I don't care, i'm dead anyway, I don't have insurance for it, and if there is anyone left around me by then they can do whatever they want or not do anything. I don't have kids so they can't stick the bill to anyone.

I don't know the cost but I kind of want to be composted. That's a thing.

In Illinois you can get buried on your own property, I told my kids to claim my skull for the mantle and compost the rest.