A crowdfunded project to ‘redesign the coffin’ into a more environmentally friendly pod has reached 30 per cent of its goal, with 10 days left to pledge.
Capsula Mindi is an egg-shaped pod made from biodegradable material, which encases the departed’s body in a foetal position. The pod is then buried as a seed in the earth, with a tree, chosen by the deceased before death, planted on top of it.
Designers Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel describe the process on their Kickstarter page: ‘From a biological point of view, death is not the end but the beginning of a way back to nature’.
The process of anaerobic digestion starts with the body and the material of the Capsula, leading to mineralisation. The length of the whole process depends on the chemical composition of the soil, relative humidity and temperature, varying from weeks to months.
The concept revolves around the ‘cycle of life’, returning components of the human body – nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and so on – back into the earth.
In addition to this, a GPS system will be put in place to map the trees’ locations. ‘Every tree will be linked with data storage which can keep all the virtual memories of the deceased: pictures, videos, audios and anything the person wanted to leave family and friends’ according to the website.
The crowdfunder has currently raised €18,097 (as of 21 June) out of its €60,000 goal, and funding is finishing on 1 July.
Light after death
The Capsula Mindi ambition is to turn cemeteries into forests. Something not far removed from a similar concept to turn cemeteries into a forest illuminated by biomass-powered lighting. The project ‘Sylvan Constellation’ is run by a team named DeathLAB at New York’s Columbia University and LATENT Productions.
The idea, which involves placing the deceased in a cyclical ‘memorial vessel’ to use the organic energy to power lights, accelerates decomposition – making them more sustainable than traditional burial practices.
The team will be spending a month-long residency at Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol this summer to test their designs.
More information is available at the Capsula Mindi Kickstarter page, while further details on green burials are detailed in Resource’s Dying to be Green article.
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