First-Ever Mushroom Casket Burial in North America
- Editor OGN Daily
- Jul 16
- 2 min read
With all the chemicals, wood and land used in traditional burials, they are not particularly Earth-friendly.
Now, a company from the Netherlands has developed a casket made entirely of mycelium - the network of thread-like structures that make up mushroom roots - that biodegrades within 45 days of burial. The innovative Loop Living Cocoon mushroom casket is grown in one week and enriches the soil while nourishing new plant life.
Recently, the first burial using such a casket took place in North America, on a peaceful hillside in rural Maine. “My father always told me that he wanted to be buried in the woods on the property that he loved so much,” said Marsya Ancker, who chose a mushroom casket for the burial of her father Mark C. Ancker. “He wanted his final resting place to nourish the land and plants he cherished.”
Since 2021, Netherlands-based Loop Biotech has facilitated more than 2,500 burials using mushroom caskets all over Europe, but the service in Maine was a first for North America. The Ancker Family hope that by sharing their story it might be an inspiration to others contemplating ways of saying goodbye that are more conscious and Earth-friendly.
“Green burial, which gained renewed attention in the 1990s, replaces traditional embalming chemicals, hardwood caskets, and synthetic linings with biodegradable materials that enable natural decomposition,” says Loop Biotech.
According to the Green Burial Council, conventional burials in the United States use approximately 20 million board feet of wood, 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid and 1.6 million tons of concrete reinforced with steel each year. Loop Biotech is part of a rising tide of innovations intended to reimagine the burial process while reversing the environmental harm of the funeral industry.