Direct Cremation: What Is Going On? Thoughts for Funeral Directors

Why the rise of direct cremation is reshaping the funeral sector — and what the industry must do next

Direct Cremation: What Is Going On?

Direct cremation is now around 20% of all funerals. And around 60% of all prepaid plans, this seismic shift has taken the industry by storm.

For some, direct cremation represents freedom: the shedding of ritual, cost, and complication. For others, it marks something very sad, almost dark — the quiet erosion of shared mourning and the communal recognition of death.

After listening to a debate between the Traditionalists and the Directs, I realised their disagreement wasn’t really about facts, but about frameworks. The Traditionalists spoke from the perspective of society — what rituals mean for us collectively. The Directs spoke from the perspective of the customer — what people want individually. They were, in effect, describing entirely different worlds.

For every cremation there is a number of, let’s call them, interests: the deceased (their wishes), those closest to the deceased (e.g. next of kin), and then potentially a number of mourners who have a wish or need, but no ‘purchase power’. Frequently, these different wishes don’t align. Traditionally, it wouldn’t have really mattered — all but the very poor or neglected received a ‘public funeral’.

Now not all funerals are public, and this decision lies either with the deceased, if they left wishes, or the family, if they did not. And Yes, the family may choose not to follow the deceased wishes, but this is rarely done lightly.

If we look at the two arguments from their different perspectives something interesting emerges.

I Am Satisfied

The Directs argue that their customers are satisfied — and why not? They offer clarity and simplicity: a straightforward service that avoids complexity and cost. Many families appreciate precisely that.

The Traditionalists’ concern lies elsewhere. When we reduce death to a private transaction, what happens to the wider social function of mourning? Satisfaction, after all, isn’t the same as meaning.

When people say, “I don’t want a fuss, just put me in the bin,” they may mean it sincerely — or they may be trying to protect others from the discomfort of grief. It’s a very British sentiment. This clear desire not to cause ‘trouble or any bother’ then passes down to those left behind, who feel obliged to follow it. And, let’s be honest, some are relieved to have this “opt-out” option.

Funerals are daunting: they demand courage, composure, and the ability to juggle logistics while grieving — particularly in our more complex society of step-siblings, divorced in-laws, and the like. The temptation to avoid all that is understandable.

It’s easy to imagine a grieving daughter thinking about a direct cremation:

“This option is wonderful. It will spare Mum from sitting at the front next to Dad’s dreaded ex, or his estranged daughter wailing with grief when she’s shown no interest for ten years. Yes, this is perfect — avoid all that. Get the ashes back, have a simple little ceremony with just me, Mum, my brother, and the grandkids. Scatter his ashes at Loch Lomond, raise a glass of whisky — job done, perfect.”

And is that not the right answer? Well, it might be — but it might not.

You don’t have to do anything?

Navigating family and friends after a death is difficult — horrible even — and now we have the ability to avoid it. Optout entirely, easy. And some may claim that omitting a funeral damages mental health. However, the modest amount of research that has been conducted on this doesn’t concur: grief does not yield to neat moral arithmetic.

However,  what research has been conducted has been from the industry in an attempt to put people off (and thus retain profits) directs, but here lies another problem — those conducting such studies often have a financial interest in the outcome, and they tend to survey only the bill payer. Unsurprisingly, those who made the decision usually back it:

“So, Mrs Jones, did you mess up your dad’s funeral and find yourself unable to grieve properly?”
“Err, no, of course I didn’t.”

I’m not suggesting that industry surveys are wrong, merely that this approach won’t yield anything meaningful. Grief varies person to person, depending on temperament and emotional proximity to the deceased.

Tradition — Help or Hindrance?

The Traditionalist reminds us that funerals have endured because they work. To a degree, that’s true: structure steadies us in chaos. But tradition is no guarantee of virtue; cruelty too has its traditions. The task is to discern which rituals still serve meaning, and which survive merely out of habit.

During the pandemic, people were furious at being denied traditional funerals. Yet once restrictions lifted, many continued to choose direct cremation. For a silent group, it clearly worked. COVID broke the bond of expectation — and for some, that was a welcome relief.

And don’t tell me tradition provides dignity. Who defines that? To a Zoroastrian, having your body offered to eagles is the height of honour and respect.

There is one thing a tradition does do. A person may not wish for ceremony, but the living may need it.

Our lives create many layers. The daughter scattering ashes by the loch may be content — she’ll tick the box marked very satisfied. But if her friend was killed in a car accident and she were excluded from a farewell by the same route, I doubt the same box would be ticked — but she wouldn’t be asked.

The real losers in this new world are the friends and wider family. The immediate family have the ashes, the documents, the authority. Friends have only stories. A funeral offers them the right to witness, to stand together, to remember.

Traditionalists may argue that, in this case, a ‘duty’ to hold a public funeral may be a gift in disguise — a way of affirming connection. The awkward tea afterwards, the ill-timed eulogy, the silent hand on a shoulder: these gestures, banal as they seem, are acts of community. To eliminate them in pursuit of convenience may relieve stress, but it also removes the small rituals that remind us grief belongs to us all. In part I agree, I would argue there is a duty to consider everyone — not necessarily to agree to or comply with, but to consider.

Duty, I hear you cry! It’s not the defence of the realm! But duty is now an unfashionable term. Just because society places the highest credence on personal choice doesn’t make it a right without a responsibility.

Modern life treats obligation and duty as burdens — something to be shrugged off. Direct cremation caters to that instinct. But sometimes duty yields a better result. How many times as parents do we say to our children: “Don’t just make the easy choice — make the right one.”

I do believe we have a duty to hold a gathering — whatever that might be. Not necessarily the kind with pallbearers and cold cups of tea, but something. And it should include all those who loved that person, no matter how challenging that might be. Because it’s about them — and they didn’t just love one person.

Economics Tilts the Debate

Time and again we hear that direct cremation is primarily a financial decision. While it would be naïve to ignore that, it’s often an easy label for a more complex rationale.

For the funeral sector, however, economics are central. Crematoria and funeral directors are losing significant revenue as direct cremation grows. Some of their concern is self-interest; some is civic. When profits vanish, infrastructure crumbles. Who then maintains the spaces where communities can still gather to remember?

I tend to be more relaxed about this — markets adjust. Not to diminish the struggles of well-respected colleagues in the sector, but let’s not argue against the tide. Customers want different things in a traditionally conservative industry, often without articulating their needs in advance.

So the CFO of a direct cremation company might say:

“Look, they’re very satisfied. They like what we’re doing. Everyone’s happy. Away we go.” not, “Hang on a minute — our shareholders are concerned about the wider cultural implications of our highly profitable business.”

The Directs have tapped into a genuine cultural current: the desire to relieve others of fuss, to keep things tidy and controlled. Their adverts are masterful — serene, reassuring, efficient.

Furthermore, the argument goes: fewer emissions, less waste, less stress — entirely more efficient.

Comparing the Reviews: What Are Families Actually Saying (and what they are not)?

If we compare the reviews from the leading direct cremation provider with those from more traditional funeral directors, we can see something rather interesting.

Pure Cremation — the standard-bearer for direct cremation — has more than 28,000 on Trustpilot, scoring a glowing 4.8 out of 5. The comments are almost uniform in tone: “Simple,” “professional,” “no fuss,” “so easy to arrange.” The recurring message is relief — the sense that a difficult job has been efficiently and respectfully completed.

Now compare that to independent traditional providers — say, Kenneth Keegan in Scotland, or Anderson Maguire — both scoring close to 5.0 out of 5, though with far fewer reviews (a few hundred rather than tens of thousands). Their praise is of a different kind: “Compassionate,” “personal,” “they looked after us,” “they cared.” The language shifts from process to people. It’s not about efficiency, but empathy.

The contrast is telling. Both groups of customers are satisfied, but satisfied with different things. The Directs are happy because the process was smooth, the price clear, the service delivered. The Traditionals are grateful because they felt seen, supported, and accompanied.

And the numbers reinforce the divide. Tens of thousands of reviews for Pure Cremation suggest a model built for scale — a service that runs like a well-oiled machine. The traditional firms, by contrast, work at human scale: smaller volume, slower pace, but often a richer emotional vocabulary.

They are answering different questions. The Directs have perfected transactional satisfaction — the customer got what they ordered. The Traditionals, when they get it right, deliver social satisfaction — the family felt cared for, the death acknowledged, the community gathered.

The big gap again is that the review platforms, of course, can’t tell us whether the friends, neighbours or relatives were included — only whether the purchaser was pleased. But that, in itself, makes the point. We are measuring a private transaction, not a public ritual.

The concerns are not societal but procedural — the lack of transparency around the process. If you tell a family after the fact that Uncle George was cremated at a certain time in a local crematorium, they’ll say: “That’s wrong.” But if you tell them beforehand, they’ll likely shrug — “That’s a shame, but it won’t change our decision.”

All of which brings us neatly back to the real question: what are we actually measuring here? The reviews show that people are happy — very happy — but perhaps only with the service, not necessarily with the experience of mourning. Efficiency and satisfaction look good in the data, but meaning doesn’t show up in star ratings. You can rate delivery times, not catharsis. When death becomes something to be “handled” rather than shared, we risk mistaking smoothness for care.

Efficiency Versus Meaning

This brings to mind a recent episode of the BBC’s Moral Maze, titled Is Democracy a Failed Experiment? One panellist argued democracy fails because it’s inefficient. But efficiency was never its purpose; democracy exists to include.

Funerals, too, were never meant to be efficient. The businesses providing them may aim for efficiency, but funerals are necessarily inefficient — full of pauses, silences, and awkward encounters. They allow time and participation: the very things efficiency eliminates.

When we prize smoothness above humanity, we forget that care is rarely convenient.

So what does it all mean?

For the funeral sector: there seems such a massive opportunity to claim the ground that does both, what that might look like I could not say, but imagine a business that could provide the simplicity of the direct with the meaning of the traditional. Maybe it is out there already and it has not been marketed very well. Maybe it I need to look radically different to cut through.