This sounds like funerals are going to continue being a "cottage industry" but shifting from coffin to cemetary model to composting with a pricetag. It sounds like our lives are not in fact, priceless and we have to pay a penance for having lived on Earth. That sound right to you? Is my compost not worth the price of admission?

Curious as to how they justify the $5,500 price of composting, which seems like it should be less expensive given the passive, less-resource-intense nature of this option.

Traditional funerals/burials are resource and infrastructure intense: chemicals, caskets, tombs, plots of land.

Cremation needs to be done in industrial-grade equipment (assuming here that funeral pyres aren't legal).

Does it really 'cost' thousands of dollars to let a body decompose - or is that what they can get away with charging since it's competitive with the alternatives?

A Viking funeral (old boat and a little gasoline) should cost less than $5500. Maybe it’s time to buy some land in the country with a pond and start running a business.

“Mostly, Clark, who is single and intentionally child-free, wants to make sure he has something in place to ease the process for his family, who will be responsible for taking care of arrangements in the advent of his death.”

This person sounds insufferable - maybe, just maybe, have the conversation with your elders about composting vs traditional burial methods as they are much, much closer to throwing off this mortal coil. And as for those paying to transport their corpse from who knows where to the facility - please run the carbon calculation first (as this sounds like an immense waste).

Viking funeral is the way to go.

I was talking about this sort of thing with an older friend this weekend. She and her husband have recently made the arrangements to be cremated and she wanted to know what I was planning. My answer is whatever is cheapest. I really do not care what will happen to my body once I'm dead. I can't imagine that Science would want my body, but if it did, it's welcome to it. Other than that, burn me up and put me in the trash somewhere.

@2 The difference between composting and cremation is time. With cremation, you can use the same specialized industrial equipment again in a few hours. That means you can have fewer of them and less building footprint. It can also be done in a more or less automated manner, since all you have to do is turn the burner on full power for its given cycle.

Composting takes longer and is done in individual cylindrical pods. Those take monitoring to make sure they're not too hot or cold, too dry or wet, etc. And because it's a slow process it takes more space. All of that costs money.

do we hafta Wait
til they're
Dead?

Gonna drive a car everywhere in a city with tons of transit and then do a weird funeral and say I'm an environmentalist. This city sucks.

There are a number of right wing nut jobs who comment here that I would love the hear were currently being composted. I have chosen composting for myself so that even in death, I can thumb my nose at traditions conservatives hold dear. That's also why I want a Drag Queen Story Hour at my wake for any children in attendance.