Loop Biotech has launched a new product, and this one gives us the chance to become trees. Their clean, white design almost makes us forget that we’re talking about one of the most goth objects in the world: urns.
Mushrooms are truly going through their moment in the spotlight, from being trendy home objects to a new-found love for their mental health benefits. Just as it grows in every aspect of our daily lives, it was only a matter of time until they moved on to the next stage.
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And it’s mushrooms that we can thank for this new innovation! Loop Biotech’s products include easily degradable coffins, funeral carriers, linen shrouds and linings, and biodegradable paint. The latest of their mushroom-y designs? Urns that allow your ashes to grow into trees.
How does it work?
You? A tree? Eventually! According to RTL Nieuws, you can choose to grow into one of three local species: apple, birch or douglas fir. Because why limit yourself to taking care of your garden when you can become the garden?
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Just like the other products, the urns are grown in seven days from upcycled hemp and mycelium, the part of the fungus that allows for their reproduction (those high school biology classes are coming in handy now).
As explained by Loop Biotech themselves, “Mycelium, the underground root network of mushrooms, is known as nature’s biggest recycler. The unique power of mycelium is its ability to share nutrients, communicate with the forest floor, and enhance soil quality.” So turn your urn into a tree!
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The products fully decompose in just 45 days, when new plants grow in your place. But this only happens when they’re buried, so you can also keep the tree urn as a somewhat morbid house plant.
The world’s most sustainable collaboration
Loop Biotech is collaborating with Natuurbegraven Nederland, which provides nature burials. The collaboration offers a package with a coffin or urn and an eternal natural grave in a nature reserve.
There are six public nature areas to choose from through Natuurbegraven Nederland’s collaboration with the Dutch nature conservation organisation, Natuurmonumenten.
You can schedule a tour by appointment at the Loop Biotech factory in Delft or one of the six nature cemeteries in the Netherlands.
However, if you opt for the urn, you can be planted wherever your loved ones wish! (Ok, maybe not, like, in front of your favourite takeaway — but you get the picture.)
To be fair, this feels nicer than imagining ourselves rotting away. At least now, when we’re gone, there will be new life in our place. It really puts our existential dread about the pointlessness of life at ease.
So how committed are you to the mushroom trend? Are you willing to become one? Let us know in the comments below!