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.

Check Caitlin Doughty's "Ask A Mortician" videos, in addition to some of the other suggestions.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Do you have access to a woodchipper?

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

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.

You ever see those old videos and photos of the monks protesting the Vietnam war…or you could do a sky funeral.

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

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

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.

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.

Who pays if you get so irradiated that you need to be buried in a lead casket, like the firefighters at Chernobyl?