That's not a smoothie, Jimmy — that's grandma!

Want your death to have the least impact on the environment? Well, you've probably thought once or twice about the usual options: burial and cremation. Maybe you've even considered a more offbeat approach, such as shooting your body into orbit in a Star Trek casket or wearing a Mushroom Death Suit.

Two companies in the U.K. are looking to shake up the body disposal scene with two "green" options: getting your body liquified or having it frozen and vacuum dried.

That friendly looking chap you see standing next to that ominous machine up there practices the first method at Glasgow-based Resomation. The process is called alkaline hydrolysis, whereby the body is heated in the above capsule, which contains water and potassium hydroxide, and is then soupified and — we imagine — seeps out of that grill up there and into jugs labeled "Wendy's frosties."

Of all four "burial" methods mentioned, liquification is said to be the most green as it has been found to have zero environmental cost. TNO, a Dutch research group, pegged the overall cost to the planet of you turning into human mush as 0€ (that alien symbol there is for euros).

The second method, the aforementioned freezing, involves Cyromation, also in Britain, freezing a body to -196 degrees Celsius and then vacuum drying it and removing precious metals (such as your dental fillings). TNO found the environmental cost of this freezing to be 10 euros, or 14 bucks. Burial ranked as the worst at 80 euros ($115) and cremation lands between that and freezing.

So, what'll it be, friend? Liquify today for a better tomorrow!

New Scientist, via io9