Mushroom… Coffins?

“Mushroom suits” arrived first, around 2011; they were initially celebrated as eco- and cost-conscious alternatives to traditional burial, a green and environmentally beneficial method of disposition.

And they sound great, in theory – here was, supposedly, a way to accelerate decomp through the expert powers of organic disassembly possessed by fungi alone. The extreme efficiency of the mycelial network is, in nature, well-known to be second to none in the process of taking apart once living things, bit by bit. So a personal mycelial network that sprouts upon burial to surround a body, then binds with toxins and heavy metals as it returns the corpse to a nutrient-dense soil, enriching the environment, sounded ideal. No embalming, no heavy casket, none of the pollution of traditional cremation.

Except, as we wrote in a previous review, the mushroom suit didn’t appear to do that… or, really, much of anything: put to the test, one suit didn’t even sprout. You may recall the circumstances: a suit-clad body was observed over time via also-buried camera. But what this experiment revealed was pretty much the same old decomp process you’d expect if the body had been shrouded in a regular bedsheet. No elaborate personal interlacing mycelial network. No mushroom block party. No lightning-fast feats of decomp.

So what can we expect, ten years later, from mushroom coffins?

Biodegradable

Okay, that’s definitely a bonus, if not an altogether unique one; that regular bedsheet is, after all, biodegradable, and so’s your average (unmushroomed) burial shroud; so, for that matter, is a cardboard box, or even one made of plain pine.

But where the mushroom coffins come in, that’s one of the clarion calls, though there are a couple of different features in addition to an eco-friendly profile.

Loop Biotech, a company in the Netherlands, has engineered its mushroom coffin to break down and itself be gone in 45 days. Made from “upcycled” hemp and mycelium, heat treated and meant to be watered upon burial to activate the spores, which flourish further with more fluids from putrefaction. The benefits of a coffin which basically disappears itself are considerable, and self-evident: less waste, less carbon footprint, less impact on the environment overall, so the mission is an honorable one; there don’t appear to be claims for accelerated decomposition.

Closer to home, however, US company Setas Eternal Living states ambitions more in line with the original mushroom suit: the Setas Eternal Living Coffin begins with a Reishi fungus and hemp substrate along with mycelium, “designed to biodegrade the human body in under three years,” and offers a pet-size option that it says can do the job in under two. With ambitions to become entirely carbon-neutral by 2026, the company’s overarching vision and mission are rooted in sustainability.

All things improve with time

Perhaps the harshest criticism of the mushroom suit was that it did not do what it claimed to. That camera where no mushroom bonanza was captured seemed damning evidence indeed, but one single observed instance of failure does not a conclusive result make. Still others chimed in that the mushroom suit didn’t do much of anything, certainly not more than Mother Earth herself would, eventually, whether the suit itself were present or not, so it was altogether unnecessary, serving no real purpose.

But as death care continues its evolution and public awareness grows, so grows the demand for variety in green options; mushroom suits and coffins already add variety to the field of affordable eco-conscious choices. That, of itself, is a good thing already. And the concept is much refined, in any event, in the ways of all technology — solid foundations for future innovation.