Cremate, people.

[meadowlander]

84. You can get green burials though.

The body breaking down naturally in soil isn't "pollution". It's just the chemical preservatives we usually add for no damn reason that potentially causes pollution. And you can choose a cemetery site that doesn't affect groundwater.

Really people should have a will and should be making this decision for themselves long before their grieving relatives have to make it for them. So there's nothing wrong with discussing it.

I'm going for cremation because I think it's a bit selfish to require a section of the earth to be set aside more or less in perpetuity for my decaying body. If everyone did that, the whole world would be a graveyard with bodies stacked ten high per grave. Nobody is going to go out of their way to visit my grave, there are much more convenient ways they could remember me, and after everyone who knows me dies, I'm just taking up real estate for nobody's benefit.

I'm sure the ecosystem benefits of the little rectangle of ground that would have been my grave being a park instead for the next 500-600 years will outweigh any air pollution from my body being burned. And ash is a fertiliser wherever it ends up being spread.