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How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

priceonomics.com

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Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

#31

Post by outworlder »

nsxwolf wrote: post #23
gambiting wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burying in a coffin requires wood and precious land space. What else do you propose? Burial at sea? A boat that would take your body there would also burn oil. I mean, there's a million more wasteful things that you can complain about, other than how we dispose of our bodies after death.

Why not just liquify bodies with chemicals and then flush them down the drain?

Down the drain? As in, the city's waste treatment plant?

I for one don't want to drink liquefied brains.

Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

#32

Post by zem »

jjoe wrote: post #3

I understand that the choice/decision to cremate the self is personal. But I think it stops where the personal starts affecting us all. Is cremation that negligible of an issue for the environment?

it's almost certainly better than embalming, and the energy cremation uses is in readier supply than the land traditional burial uses, so i'd guess it's a net win over most methods. "green burial" would be better, but it's not common.

Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

#34

Post by chimeracoder »

gambiting wrote: post #14
jjoe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the resulting ash isn't biodegradable. Cemetery land can be reused after full decomposition and after enough time has passed.

How is it not biodegradable? It's mostly carbon and calcium, right? In which case it's as natural as it can be - saying it's not biodegradable is like saying that rocks are not biodegradable. You could probably use it as a fertilizer(not that you would want to, respect towards the deceased and all that) and it would be absolutely fine. Cemetery land is essentially locked for hundreds of years, probably more since no…

> probably more since no one wants to be turning 500-year old graves into farmland.

In Manhattan, the place that is now Washington Square Park was once the location of mass graves for people who died of yellow fever during an epidemic. Before that, it was used as farmland.

That said, this is far from the norm in the US - New York is one of the few places where this could happen, due to the scarcity of space, and it's also unclear whether people remembered the locations of the graves at the time the park was constructed.

Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

#35

Post by mixmastamyk »

dankohn1 wrote: post #9

I comparison shopped for my grandmother's cremation a decade ago. I think she would have appreciated the effort. She had already purchased a cemetery slot, so the only question was how to transport her ashes there. The low bidder sent a hearse about 100 miles to get her body, and was easy to deal with on the phone (and took credit cards).

Why is a hearse needed to transport (presumably an urn of) ashes?

Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

#36

Post by sithadmin »

nsxwolf wrote: post #23
gambiting wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burying in a coffin requires wood and precious land space. What else do you propose? Burial at sea? A boat that would take your body there would also burn oil. I mean, there's a million more wasteful things that you can complain about, other than how we dispose of our bodies after death.

Why not just liquify bodies with chemicals and then flush them down the drain?

Why not liquify them and turn them into biofuel? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

#37

Post by rpgmaker »

stevesearer wrote: post #2

I temped in a sales office for a cremation company a number of years ago and it was a very interesting experience. You can pre-buy cremations and issued a legally binding document which states that you are to be cremated. This can save your family the trouble and heartache of shopping around for a good deal as well as debate/drama over what to do with your remains. From what I understand, it is also easy to be upsold…

> You can pre-buy cremations and issued a legally binding document which states that you are to be cremated.

Even if your next of kin disagree and want a traditional burial for your body? People can be assholes and disregard your final wishes if they think their upholding some kind of tradition/religious principle.

Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

#38

Post by yeukhon »

ergothus wrote: post #27

Somewhat topical story: A co-worker was part of a jogging group (this was in Virginia, USA), and one of their members died after a fight with cancer. He wanted his ashes to be spread in the Botanical Gardens, where they ran. But said Botanical Gardens had rules denying this (don't recall if it was hygiene, environmental, or just not wanting to open the door to piles of ash). So the group somberly gathered, took his a…

I recommend check out videos on the Internet, some of them are pretty high quality. I have seen the ashes myself before, yeah pretty just gravel.

Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

#39

Post by smileysteve »

outworlder wrote: post #31
nsxwolf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just liquify bodies with chemicals and then flush them down the drain?

Down the drain? As in, the city's waste treatment plant? I for one don't want to drink liquefied brains.

... Where do you think fish biodegrade to?

Eventually bodies make it to the ground, which then eventually make it to the air...

Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call

#40

Post by rpgmaker »

cglace wrote: post #20

Years back, there was a cremation place in Georgia that had its cremation machine break. It was too expensive to fix so the guy just kept accepting bodies. He would drive them to his property and just dump them. It was a pretty huge case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Crematory

"Between 1996 and the date of the discovery, more than 2,000 bodies had been sent to Tri-State. The search ultimately recovered 339 uncremated bodies. Of the 339 bodies that were discovered, 226 were identified."

How long did they expect to keep that up? I could conceive of them doing it for maybe a year and then buying a machine but it seems that, at least to them, it became business as usual.

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