For those looking to live in the most sustainable way, there is now an afterlife as well.
An intrepid Dutch inventor now you are “growing” coffins by putting mycelium, the root structure of fungi, together with hemp fiber in a special mold that, in a week, becomes what could basically be compared to what an unpainted Egyptian sarcophagus looked like.
And while traditional wooden coffins come from trees that can take decades to grow and years to decompose in the ground, mushroom versions biodegrade, delivering the remains to nature in just a month and a half.
In our 21st century, when the individual spirit can increasingly thrive beyond the restrictions of yesteryear, death and funerals are often still constrained by the tradition that it may not live up to the vision of the deceased or their loved ones.
“We all have different cultures and different ways of wanting to be buried in the world. But I do think there are many of us, a large percentage of us, who would like it to be different. And it’s been the same old school for 50 or 100 years,” said Shawn Harris, a US investor in the Loop Biotech company that produces the coffins.
With climate awareness and a special care for nature as a focal point in more and more lives, Loop Biotech says it has the answer for those who want to live the full circle of life, and then some, as close as they ever thought. .
Bob Hendrikx, the 29-year-old founder wearing an “I am compost” T-shirt at a recent presentation, said he had done a lot of research on nature “especially mushrooms. And I learned that they are the biggest recyclers on the planet. So I thought, hey, why can’t we be part of the cycle of life? And then he decided to grow a mushroom-based coffin.”. Moss can be wrapped inside coffins for funeral ceremonies.
And for those who prefer cremation, there is also an urn they grow that can be buried with a sapling sticking out. So when the urn is broken, the ashes can help bring the tree to life.
“Instead of: ‘we die, we end up on the ground and that’s it’, there is now a new story: we can enrich life after death and you can continue to thrive like a new plant or tree,” Hendrikx said in an interview. “It brings a new narrative where we can be a part of something bigger than ourselves.”
The coffins cost 995 euros (more than 1,000 dollars) each, and the price of an urn is 196.80 euros (212 dollars).
Dutch startup Loop Biotech displays cocoon-shaped coffins and urns, grown from local fungi and recycled hemp fibers
To put nature at the center of such funerals, Loop Biotech has partnered with Natuurbegraven Nederland (Nature Burials Netherlands), which uses six special habitats where remains can be embedded in protected parks.
At the moment, Loop Biotech has the capacity to “cultivate” 500 coffins or urns per month, and are shipped all over Europe. Hendrikx said that they have become fashionable in the Nordic countries.
“These are the northern European countries where there is more awareness about the environment and also where there is autumn”, said. “So that they know and understand the fungus, how it works, how it is part of the ecosystem.”