First funeral held using ‘living coffin’ made of mushroom fibre | Hacker News Reader

First funeral held using ‘living coffin’ made of mushroom fibre

theguardian.com

41 pointselorant24 comments

A problem with local cemeteries (in the US) is that they require vaults in order to prevent collapse of graves, simply because it's a maintenance headache. You can even leave the bottom open to speed up decomposition, but you still need the vault.

A friend told me that in the past, before concrete vaults were standard, cemetery workers would routinely fill in collapsed graves with soil. Seems like you'd need to do that for this coffin — or even for a wooden coffin without a concrete vault.

I wonder if we could go back to that? Find a middle ground between giving people time to grieve and reusing land once nobody cares anymore. Have a periodic petition to preserve certain graves, but anything over a certain age by default can have its space reused.

Would packing the coffin with compost and other 'material' tight prevent collapse ?

I thought the vast vast majority of people in the West are cremated? Are normal people still being buried?

In the US it is about 50/50

Looks like the state with the highest rate of cremation is Nevada at 75.9% and Mississippi has the lowest at 19.7%.

It turns out Japan's cremation rate is 99.97% (2014) which actually lead to the appearance of "corpse hotels" where the body can rest until a slot opens up.

It seems countries where buddhism and hinduism are prevalent have some of the highest cremation rates, and unsurprisingly there is an overall trend of higher rates in denser areas (even in countries where the average rate is on the lower end).

This is done regularly in the philippines. After decomposition they just scoop out the remains and incincerate if the family doesn't want the remains.

I wonder if that won't cause more bioluminescence when the body decomposes? I seem to remember modern coffin are pretty good at limiting these effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp#Natural_exp...

Fascinating, thanks for sharing. It seems to me that the buildup of phosphine and methane due to a non-permeable traditional container is what leads to the storage and eventual release of these combustible organics, whereas a hastier decomposition during which the vessel breaks down as well won't lead to enough accumulation to allow visible ignition.

Is this something that needs to be limited?

You never hear of a chemical and then it pops up twice in a week! Now I'm wondering what sort of ghosts they have on Venus... .

I mean... why even use a coffin at that point? Just bury the body under dirt and pile some extra dirt on top of the hole for when the body decomposes and things settle over time so it is eventually level.

The mushrooms absorb heavy metals from the body, so the mushroom coffin should make the body "healthier" for the environment.

How many heavy metals are actually in the body? And wouldn't the dirt absorb them just as well as the mushrooms? Wouldn't the mushrooms eventually degrade and turn into dirt? Aren't coffins commonly made out of metal anyways? And who exactly is trying to plant shit on top of graves anyways?

I sort of love the username posting these totally relevant, well-conceived questions.

Customs/culture, I would guess.

There also may be legal restrictions on ways of burying that require a coffin, for example for public health reasons.

This would make for a pretty gnarly funeral... lowering a body into the ground...

How green-friendly is cremation at this point?

I'd personally prefer not taking up space. Just give me a web page memorial in case people want to "visit" with me and I can even curate it before I die, and I'm good.

What's wrong with just burying the body without coffin? The west needs to learn a lot from Islam.

Dying shouldn't be so expensive. Think of all the real-estate wasted by preventing the body to decomposed.

Biohazards I would guess.

I would think that cremation is the most effective means of burying the dead to prevent the loss of key real estate.

I feel cremation would be hazardous to environment.

Is there any resource on biohazards of burying? I will look into this sometime.

I mean. I guess a furnace does use energy, but humans have all sorts of disease you don't want getting into your groundwater.

A pine box isnt going to stop that either.

Agreed, which is why I think we should always cremate.

Death by Quorn.

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