
How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/how-much-does-a-cremation-cost-depends-who-you/
======
ergothus
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 ashes, divvied them up among a
collection of plastic bags, poked some holes, and went for their normal jog
around the park.

At the end the bags had only bits of bone too big to fit through the holes
left. (Turns out cremation doesn't result in ONLY ash).

I haven't decided if this was a triumph of individual respect over
bureaucracy, or a blatant disregard for the commons.

~~~
refurb
_Turns out cremation doesn 't result in ONLY ash_

You actually end up with large, intact bones after cremation. They actually
take the bones and grind them up into finer particles.

I've never seen cremation, ashes, but I've been told they look similar to
gravel.

~~~
sandworm101
The process as I understand it:

(1) Prep the body by cutting out anything that will harm the cremator,
specifically pacemakers with potentially explosive batteries. (2) Fire. (3)
Sift through the ashes/bones for any metal (hips/metal screws) (4) Macerate
remaining bits into homogeneous ash.

~~~
DanBC
My dad left his artifical knees to his children when he died. My sisters
didn't want them, so I got them.

They're mildly interesting. They're great if you have someone who fiddles
around with stuff on your desk and doesn't stop when asked.

"What's this?"

"My dead dad's knee. That dust? That's my dead dad."

------
stevesearer
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
on burial packages when you're grieving so pre-buying basically locks in the
price and helps prevent guilty feelings for not buying the top of the line
casket.

~~~
rpgmaker
> 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.

------
cglace
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Crematory)

~~~
rpgmaker
"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.

~~~
LordKano
I remember when this was a breaking story.

At first, they claimed that some bodies had been improperly stored as they
were awaiting repairs to the retort.

Then, when the scope of the issue became known, I wondered the same thing. How
long did they think they could keep stacking bodies without anyone noticing
them?

I don't believe they ever thought that far ahead.

~~~
kweinber
I saw a presentation on it done by one of the officials who did the cleanup
(he was actually the same guy in charge of body recovery in Kosovo death
camps, brought in because Tristate was so grisly) . He explained that the guy
who ran the place was slow (mentally handicapped) ... He came from a good
family, who ran the facility responsibly until the father died and he took
over. . He wasn't a creep or a cheat, just was not mentally equipped to handle
the responsibility.

~~~
rpgmaker
Wow, thanks for the background on that. He must've been way more handicapped
than anyone thought though.

------
stcredzero
_Even more troubling, in the Internet age, funeral parlors tend to make
pricing hard to find. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission allows funeral
homes to keep their rates hidden until someone actually writes or calls a
funeral home representative -- leaning on regulations last updated in 1994 --
rather than pushing funeral homes to let the customer compare online._

How about a company where you can subscribe to get such prices? The company
runs something like a call center where software gives employees assignments
to periodically inquire about prices, which are then posted to the database?
This would cover prices for more than just cremations, of course.

~~~
dsp1234
FTA:

 _" This post is adapted from the blog of Parting, a Priceonomics customer."_

From [http://www.parting.com](http://www.parting.com):

"Find trusted funeral homes near you to compare quality and prices"

~~~
shostack
This should really be higher. The entire post is a content marketing/native
advertising placement.

But that's the only new publisher business model that seems to work these
days.

------
roflchoppa
Almost all the funerals I've been to, the person is cremated. I had this
strange experience when this past summer when my buddy died and his body was
placed into a mausoleum. Later on when we were back in the area (LA), my other
friend asked me if I wanted to go back to his mausoleum to see him. I never
understood the desire to go back to those places, its almost if one is not
wanting to let go of the death that took place.

------
PhasmaFelis
> _And the lower range cremation prices are likely to attract additional
> business. They are loss leaders. "If it's under $1000, they're probably
> losing money. You really don't make much profit on the direct cremation
> alone," Jung says. "They're just trying to get you into the door."_

How on earth can incinerating a human body require $1000 worth of consumables,
even factoring in the pay for the operator and other employees?

------
woebtz
Semi-related, it's hard to imagine being defrauded out of cremation remains,
but it's apparently quite likely to happen during pet cremations (due to the
cost to run the machines, multiple smaller pets are processed at the same time
and you won't necessarily get back what you sent).

This Freakonomics episode goes into more detail:
[http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/14/the-troubled-cremation-
of...](http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/14/the-troubled-cremation-of-stevie-
the-cat-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/)

------
dankohn1
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).

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

~~~
dankohn1
Hearse to transport the body to the crematorium. The ashes were put in a
styrofoam box.

~~~
CWuestefeld
My parents are part owners of a funeral home. The hearse is only ceremonial,
e.g., for bringing a casket from the funeral ceremony to the cemetery. At
least in their locale, most funeral homes do not even own their own hearse,
but rent one as needed.

For picking up bodies, like from the hospital or whatever, they've got a
regular van.

------
jack9
> People have been buried in coffins for centuries, so why the rise in
> cremations? > The Cremation Association took a look at this question

Why would anyone need to "take a look". We don't have room for all the bodies
and internment has (always?) been more expensive than cremation.

------
threefour
If you're interested in learning more, this is a great book on the entire
process and industry, a rare critical view from inside:

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25189315-smoke-gets-in-
yo...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25189315-smoke-gets-in-your-eyes)

------
rattray
If anyone is interested in working on this, I am connected with an "industry
veteran" (has owned dozens of funeral homes and similar institutions across
the country) working on an "Uber of cremations". My email is in my profile.

~~~
newman314
This seems strange. While I think price transparency is good, I'm not quite
sure what incentive a funeral home would have in participating since
essentially it would be a race to zero.

------
dschiptsov
Look at traditional Hindu communities - they have all the answers.)

------
jjoe
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?

~~~
cpwright
Compared to the energy you will use throughout your life, the energy used for
a cremation is trivial (about a 5,000 mile drive).

The alternative (burial) impacts the environment considerably as well. There
is plenty of land devoted to cemeteries. Trees or metal are used (once) for
the casket. In many places, you also need a concrete vault, which would add to
the impact.

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

~~~
gambiting
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 one wants to be turning 500-year old
graves into farmland.

~~~
Spooky23
Rocks aren't biodegradable. There are buildings in Rome with basements made of
Roman concrete.

Cemetery land gets reused all of the time. In my city, the main park (1890)
and high school (1970) were both built on cemetery land. The land gets seized
by eminent domain or purchase, bodies exhumed and rebutted elsewhere.

~~~
pixl97
>Rocks aren't biodegradable.

I'm sorry, but what?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen)

>When growing on mineral surfaces, some lichens slowly decompose their
substrate by chemically degrading and physically disrupting the minerals,
contributing to the process of weathering by which rocks are gradually turned
into soil. While this contribution to weathering is usually benign, it can
cause problems for artificial stone structures. For example, there is an
ongoing lichen growth problem on Mount Rushmore National Memorial that
requires the employment of mountain-climbing conservators to clean the
monument.

and

>The lichen exudates, which have powerful chelating capacity, the widespread
occurrence of mineral neoformation, particularly metal oxalates, together with
the characteristics of weathered substrates, all confirm the significance of
lichens as chemical weathering agents.[96]

It's believed lichen may be as old as 2.7 billion years, so they may have beat
out every other form of biodegradation by a good margin.

~~~
Spooky23
In terms of geologic process, sure. But a concrete cemetery vault is going to
remain right where it is, in it's present form for thousands of years.

Near where I live, there are boulders that were dragged down a valley by
retreating glaciers 10,000 years ago. They've been exposed to the elements for
that time, are are materially intact.

~~~
gambiting
I am wondering what is your definition of biodegradable then. I would argue
that cremation is the ultimate form of biodegradation of the body, since it
has been reduced to something that cannot be reduced any further - you end up
with some carbon and calcium, which is what you would end up anyway - that's
what we are made out of in the end.

