Did you know that every year in the United States, enough steel is buried in the form of caskets to build another Golden Gate Bridge? Or that every year enough wood to build four million homes is used to build caskets that are then buried in the ground where they slowly decompose? How about the fact that the embalming fluid used in traditional burials each year could fill 40 swimming pools?

The Berkeley Planning Journal reported on this back in 2012. Their report concluded that the money we spend on traditional burials in this country could fund the Environmental Protection Agency twice over – in fact, it could almost fund NASA. (For you youngsters out there, “EPA” and “NASA” are now-defunct federal government agencies dedicated to making the Earth livable and exploring outer space back when such things were thought to be important rather than left-wing exercises in waste and fraud).

I ran across this information in a wonderful article by Robert Moor in Outside’s online magazine called To Be Reborn as a Tree in which the author discusses some of the recent innovations in the ancient task of returning our ashes to ashes and our dust to dust, including forest cemeteries and human composting.

Moor’s article got me thinking about my own death management plans. For many years, my plan was to have my body cremated and my ashes thrown on Lonnie Anderson, who at the time was one of the stars of a sitcom called WKRP in Cincinnati. Of course, I wasn’t married at the time and was young and immature. Now that I am older, happily married, and more mature my plans have changed; now I would like to be cremated and have my ashes thrown on Penelope Cruz. For me, that’s about as close to personal growth as I get.

Cremation is certainly a less pricey alternative to a traditional burial involving a preserved body and a casket in an actual cemetery. Traditional burials run $20,000 or more while a professional cremation typically costs closer to $2,000. I don’t know if there is a black market of amateur cremators who might be persuaded to burn a body for even less money, but let’s hope not.

Where the ashes of cremated bodies (called ‘cremains’ in the trade) end up is not well documented. Some are spread in wild landscapes or tossed off the back of boats, which is romantic and memorable but, for the most part, illegal. Some are kept in fancy urns on mantels and bookshelves. Some disappear into people’s attics or garages. I understand a surprisingly high percentage of cremains are simply never picked up from the mortuary from whence they were created.

Cremation is more Earth-friendly than traditional burials, but it too has its drawbacks. Cremains may be laced with heavy metals such as mercury from dental fillings or thermometers and tainted fish inadvertently left in the decedent’s pockets. Cremains are also high in salt and very alkaline and, therefore, aren’t conducive to supporting plant life.

I’m still on the fence about human composting. While ecologically sound, for me, it still invokes images of every schlocky horror movie I’ve ever seen where a body is dumped in a tank or a pond to disintegrate and decompose and yet manages to come back to life to torment its tormentor.

My current thinking on disposing of my remains, assuming Ms. Cruz continues to ignore my many letters seeking her permission to be the target for my ashes, is to have my cremains divided equally among my wife and kids to do with as they see fit, with a bit of them spread on the garden in our yard and a another bit dropped into the rising tide at Pritchard Park.

On the other hand, I’ve heard from more than one medical professional that a body as unique as mine really ought to be left to science – presumably as part of a study to understand how a person who considers Corn Nuts and potato chips to be part of the vegetable family could live as long as I have. In preparation for that eventuality, I’ve been sticking my head into the freezer for a few minutes every day in order to prepare my brain for being cryogenically preserved. Further proof that there is no off position on the genius switch.

Tom Tyner of Bainbridge Island writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper.