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Dutch startup Loop has taken a world first thanks to funeral coffins that are lined with moss and were made, or rather grown, from mycelium, the fungal roots that form an extensive underground network necessary for the health of ecosystems around the world.
Company’s goal
The company’s aim is to allow people to enrich the soil into which they are buried instead of contaminating it with synthetic and metallic materials from conventional coffins.
This material allows people to help nature even in the case that their soul has already left this world.
Burial in this way enriches the soil and does not pollute it
The author of this great idea is Bob Hendrikx, founder of Loop and a fan of mycelium.
Mycelium is essentially a living organism that has the ability to neutralize all kinds of toxic substances while providing nourishment to everything that grows above ground.
Hendrikx calls it nature’s recycler: “It constantly looks for waste materials that can be converted into nutrients suitable for our environment,” Hendrikx explains in a press release.
“The same goes for toxic substances, including oil, plastics and metals. For example, mycelium was used in Chernobyl, it is used in Rotterdam to clean soil and some farmers also use it to make the soil healthy again. “
The Dutch startup thus creates “a living coffin”, which is is, unlike the classic one, grown.
Thanks to it, the human body decomposes in a fraction of the time
that would be achieved in a traditional wooden coffin. A regular coffin has varnished and metal parts, as well as synthetic clothing, therefore decomposition can easily take more than ten years. The company hopes that a mycelium coffin will allow this process to occur naturally within two to three years.
Production of a natural coffin takes several weeks
the mycelium is grown in the shape of a coffin and then naturally dried to stop its growth. Once the coffin is buried in the ground, it is exposed to underground water, which allows it to grow again and start the composting process.
As Dutch News reports, the coffin has already been incorporated into the offerings of two Dutch funeral companies and only recently they buried the first person in it: “after months of development it was truly an impressive moment when we could see someone depart to the other world in this extraordinary way,” Hendrikx explains.
