Boil in the bag funeral is the best after death way to go

On Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos last year I had a little moment with a giant tortoise. His hazy eyes peered from under a glowering brow as he paused his sedentary foraging to consider me; I considered him in return, his capacity for great age and his unthinkingly relaxed lifestyle. A guava fell from a tree, donking off his shell and rolling to my feet. 

I ate it, taking it as a gift from the old lad who will likely live far longer than me, doing far less and yet making just as much impact on the earth, in the grand scheme of things. 

Celebrity, a death and walking 10,000 steps a day in Glasgow's Govanhill

We are, truly, dots. Dots that will cease to exist and be forgotten long before the fancy bricks of Machu Picchu crumble or the silver black volcanic earth of Isabela island slides underneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

All that cutting about the globe gives a sense both of one's own mortality and of the fragility of the planet, the delicate ecosystems we selfishly mess with.

And so I wonder, as I cycle and recycle and fret about my carbon footprint, what the best thing to do with my old carcass might be, once I stop needing it. It's an element of environmentalism that - as with all things death - is tricky to talk about. 

Cremations use a lot of carbon while burials take up too much room. An average cremation releases carbon equivalent to electricity enough to power 65,000 households. 

So what green thing to do with your soul's flesh sack? No point in being light on your feet in life and heavy after death. 

I've always thought it might be best to be buried at sea. While I appreciate I won't be there to experience it, being consumed by flames is a terrifying thought. So too being under the ground, munched by bugs.

Soon, though, being boiled in the bag will be an option. 

Co-op funeral directors are going to introduce aquamation to the menu of body disposal options. It was first used to dispose of the bodies of animals used in science experiments but the environmental benefits for discarding remains made it a useful option for humans too. It's common in other countries but had never been authorised in Britain.

Aquamation is being dubbed "boil in the bag" but that's a bit of misdirection. This is more Breaking Bad-style "dissolve in the bathtub". The body - maybe your body, maybe mine - is immersed in water and a strong alkali and heated to 150C.

My 25 year love affair with American rock group The Eels on their Barrowland gig

One becomes liquid, except for one's bones, which are dried in an oven and reduced to dust. Your loved ones can have these returned in an urn for scattering. 

Who, in lieu of children, will want my bones? When even 35 seemed an impossible age away, we did that thing of making pacts with pals that if we were still single in the ancient future 20 years hence, we'd get married. 

Maybe I need to make pacts with would-be bone collectors. Please look after this urn. 

Death is hard to talk about because it's so unappealing but also so hellishly tricky to imagine. How do you rationalise non-existence? Imagining absence, trying to give it a shape, is surely an oxymoron. 

I like this idea of a boil in the bag funeral. It's going to be offered first in the north-east of England, where Northumbrian Water has granted approval for the resulting water to be sent back into the drainage network.

It will be classified as "trade effluent", the same permit used by launderettes. You will be no more or less than suds.

Are pupils identifying as cats? If they are, who could blame them?

Some might be squeamish but I'm comforted by the thought of becoming liquid, by my wet molecules running away to sea. Maybe - this is a stretch, I know - running into the Pacific to help smother Isabela, to force changes to atlases and create new coastlines.

Or absorbed into clouds and made rain that nourishes gauva trees to nourish plodding ectotherms in turn. 

Better than fire, or worms. A reincarnation, of sorts.