{"id":44190,"date":"2016-04-29T07:22:11","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T05:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=44190"},"modified":"2017-08-22T12:16:33","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T10:16:33","slug":"mushroom-suits-biodegradable-urns-and-deaths-green-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/mushroom-suits-biodegradable-urns-and-deaths-green-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"Mushroom Suits, Biodegradable Urns and Death\u2019s Green Frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wait, don\u2019t click away. Ms. Lee, 40, is an artist and entrepreneur who has long been intrigued by how people relate to their environment. So, to start the process of un-freaking people out, she created what she calls the Infinity Burial Suit<\/a>. It\u2019s a $1,500 outfit that incorporates mushrooms meant to break down a human corpse, cleanse it of toxins and distribute nutrients back into the soil. No one has been buried in it yet, but she said that a man who suffers from a chronic illness has agreed to be the first.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to propose a different way of thinking about death that moves us toward death acceptance,\u201d she said. \u201cI think death acceptance is a critical aspect of protecting our environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Lee is among a growing group of entrepreneurs trying to disrupt death. She offers her mushroom suit as an alternative to what she calls the \u201cdeath denial\u201d practices of the funeral industry \u2014 which is still embalming bodies then putting them in coffins entombed in concrete liners \u2014 and the cryonics field, which aims to preserve dead people for later revival.<\/p>\n

Her pitch: Why not just accept that we\u2019re going to die, and do less harm to the environment in the process? Happy Earth Day!<\/p>\n

The Rise of the Green Burial<\/p>\n

Green burials were considered a niche alternative as recently as a decade ago, but consumers and funeral professionals are warming to the idea of burying the dead without the use of embalming chemicals, formaldehyde or cremations that release metals and gases back into the environment. According to a 2015 survey by the Funeral and Memorial Information Council, 64 percent of respondents indicated an interest in green funerals, up from 43 percent in 2010.<\/p>\n

At Western Carolina University, researchers with the Urban Death Project are learning how best to turn corpses into compost. In Los Angeles, Undertaking LA operates a \u201cdo-your-own-death\u201d workshop to give people the tools to plan home funerals.<\/p>\n

Edward Bixby, who operates the Steelmantown Cemetery green burial preserve in Woodbine, N.J., said that the typical motivation of a green burial customer has shifted over the past decade. He says it\u2019s now a 50-50 split between customers who are interested strictly in the environmental benefits and those who simply don\u2019t accept the conventions and costs associated with traditional funerals. In 2014, national median figures put the costs around $8,500 for a funeral with a viewing, burial and vault, and $6,000 for a cremation funeral with a viewing, according to statistics from the National Funeral Directors Association. Eco-friendly burials are not necessarily cheaper, but consumers may save on coffins, grave lining costs and funeral fees.<\/p>\n

The chance to customize the burial is often more important than the environmental concern, Mr. Bixby said. \u201cIt\u2019s cathartic.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Death Designs Go Viral<\/p>\n

The new death start-ups are finding customers through word of mouth. Ms. Lee created an online group of people (most of them still healthy) who were paired off to discuss their personalities, fears and plans for death. David Weaver, an advertising executive who lives in rural Vermont, joined after being inspired by a 2011 TED Talk Ms. Lee gave about her suit. (The talk, in which Ms. Lee wore the death suit and discussed \u201ctraining\u201d mushrooms to eat her own nail clippings, skin and hair, has been viewed by more than 1.3 million people.)<\/p>\n

Mr. Weaver bought a death suit for himself and a cotton death pod for his two-year-old wire terrier, Beaker. He\u2019s planning ahead: Both he and his pet are healthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe as a society have had a hard time getting over this image of, you\u2019re put in the ground, in a cemetery or in an urn,\u201d Mr. Weaver, 50, said in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s very untraditional, but this is the only thing I\u2019ve been able to see where my values while I was alive can be implemented as I die.\u201d<\/p>\n

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ms. Lee has long been obsessed with how humans relate to their environment. She used her body as a test subject once before, adhering to a strict vegan diet to see if her urine could nourish plants. She grew cabbage that she then made it into kimchi.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started to question why we\u2019re so disgusted with our bodies,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cI want to challenge those taboos where we don\u2019t think that we\u2019re animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Ms. Lee\u2019s TED talk, her suit gives her the appearance of a ninja. But in person, it\u2019s nonthreatening. When I tried it on, the cotton suit, created with a fashion designer, Daniel Silverstein, felt like a heavy pair of pajamas. The jacket has wooden buttons and flaps that cover the face and hands. It is lined with two different types of mushrooms that assist in breaking down human tissue and delivering nutrients back to the soil over a period of months. On the outside, the stitching mimics the dendritic patterns of mushroom mycelium.<\/p>\n

Design and innovative technology seem to be an important component of these new death products. Roger Molin\u00e9, the 24-year-old co-founder of Bios Urn, began a Kickstarter campaign after customers asked for better ways to monitor the health of the trees growing from biodegradable urns. The company raised over $83,000 to design an incubator that, through a sensor embedded in the soil, will send updates to a custom phone app. Around 60,000 urns have been ordered and 200 incubators pre-ordered.<\/p>\n

Mr. Molin\u00e9, who operates the company in Barcelona, estimates that 90 percent of the orders have come from American customers.<\/p>\n

Adding the sensors has appealed to consumers who want a \u201cmore hands-on approach,\u201d he wrote in an email. \u201cWe felt that it was O.K. to bring death, and the process of dying, up to speed, and match it to 21st century demands and requests.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Future of Human Disposal<\/p>\n

The mushroom suit and the Bios Urn are among the relatively few new products that people can actually order. Some that have caught a lot of attention are not in production. The Capsula Mundi<\/a> project, created by two Italian artists and first showcased in 2003, has gathered a large online following whose members are interested being buried in egg-shaped pods underground. The ideas and designs have generated countless headlines, but no one has been buried this way, the artists, Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel, confirmed in an email message. The first step will be to design an egg-shaped urn, they said.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s actually an organization, the Green Burial Council, that certifies whether products like this are earth-friendly. Kate Kalanick, its executive director, said that Ms. Lee\u2019s suit and the Bios Urn have not yet been approved by the council, which lists about 30 products and vendors as certified.<\/p>\n

The designs may draw people who are curious, and even imaginative, about their deaths, but not everyone is ready to embrace death suits, tree-growing urns or egg-shaped pods. Ms. Lee has even received occasional angry messages. \u201cI hope the mushrooms eat you faster,\u201d a critic wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

Given her goals, she takes this as a compliment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wait, don\u2019t click away. Ms. Lee, 40, is an artist and entrepreneur who has long been intrigued by how people relate to their environment. So, to start the process of un-freaking people out, she created what she calls the Infinity Burial Suit. It\u2019s a $1,500 outfit that incorporates mushrooms meant to break down a human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[11785,6406],"supplier":[13696,13544,1936,13546,13545],"class_list":["post-44190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-composites","tag-environment","supplier-capsula-mundi","supplier-green-burial-council","supplier-massachusetts-institute-of-technology","supplier-steelmantown-cemetery","supplier-western-carolina-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44190"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=44190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}