Egg-shaped burial pods!
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A buddy of mine told me recently that funerals can cost €10K+ and he was planning to sort out something more practical well in advance! He reckons that €10K would buy a lot of beer!
Anyway we have discussed the various options available and find them to be wasteful and expensive. Cremation is possibly the best option but that is also not eco friendly.
Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel, two Italian designers, have come up with the Capsula Mundi concept which could turn into a movement. http://www.capsulamundi.it/
The idea is quite straightforward. The corpse is not pumped with toxic chemicals just placed in a biodegradable egg-shaped burial pod that feeds the trees planted over and in turn cemeteries into sacred forests! What a pleasant concept. Oh! btw, the corpse is placed in the pod in the fetal position. Well thats the way we come into the world so maybe it should be the way we leave it.
There is an article on Treehugger here, http://www.treehugger.com/culture/egg-shaped-burial-pods-fertilize-forest.html It raises some practical points about distant between pod positions and the density of the trees. I imagine a tree could be planted over the central pod and future pod places readied in a circle around the tree. I would have no problem being part of 'team fertilizer' for a beautiful oak tree
Wouldn't it be great if cemeteries were forests where people could visit and enjoy nature, instead of places where graves are visited for a maximum of 20-50 years and then they become forgotten.
I'll be spreading the idea!
Mike
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I like the idea.
It would have even more meaning if you are buried at Easter....!!
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What happens when it comes time to chop a guy's tree down?
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An architect and designer in the Netherlands designed something from the same point of view: a 'coffin' made of bamboo fibers and a bio-degradable material. Tree-seeds are encapsulated in the 'ropes'. New life would come from the deceased.
See picture and text (Dutch) here: http://www.ro-ad.org/nl/projecten/05.htm
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There is a small movement in the US for natural burials (no embalming, biodegradable casket or no casket at all), with some cemeteries now offering them.
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@krisidious said:
What happens when it comes time to chop a guy's tree down?
Kris, I thought about that. How about planting Bristlecone Pines, good for 5,000+ years
Kaas, thanks for links. I will see if they can be translated.
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now we're talking...
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@mike lucey said:
...I will see if they can be translated.
I had a go with help of Google Translate:
*The mission statement of the workshop 'Dutch design meets bamboo' to design a product with bamboo, was used to introduce the 'Cradle to Cradle' principle in our work.Our goal was to create a biodegradable substitute for fiberglass reinforced polyester. By combining the fast growing and strong bamboo fiber with PLA (a biodegradable plastic) we reached our goal: a thermoplastic that could be used in many areas of the product industry.
For the workshop, we have made the ultimate illustration of biodegradability; a coffin. In the straps of the coffin are the processed seeds of maple tree. The body and coffin are nutrients for the new life that will com out of those seeds.*
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Thanks Kaas. It clever to place the tree seeds in the straps.
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