The first time I saw the “living coffin,” it looked less like a box and more like a hush—an oval cradle of soft white fiber that asked the earth a question. It was grown, not built; threaded together by the quiet industry of fungi.
In the Netherlands, where rivers write long sentences across the land, a group of designers and biologists are trying to change how we dwell in our final home—so that, in death, we nourish the soil we once walked upon.
A Living Coffin That Grows From Nature
The idea sounds like folklore—mushrooms ushering us back to the forest—but it is briskly practical. Loop Biotech, a Dutch startup, grows coffins from mycelium, the filament network that lies beneath mushrooms.
In their facility in Delft, they can “grow” a casket in about a week. Under ideal conditions, the casket itself biodegrades in roughly 45 days; the body inside returns to the earth in two to three years, far faster than in a conventional coffin that can delay decomposition for decades.
The notion is as ecological as it is emotional: instead of sealing ourselves away with metals, hardwoods, and embalming chemicals, we become part of the nutrient cycle we once depended on.
A Design That Comforts The Living
Loop’s “Living Cocoon” has the tender, rounded profile of something meant to be held. Its surfaces are slightly velvety, like the rind on a soft cheese, and many mourners describe it as an object that invites touch rather than distance.
That tactile gentleness is intentional. Founder Bob Hendrikx told The Verge that, “instead of having, like, a hard, pointy casket, you now have something that you can actually hug”—a philosophy as attentive to grief as it is to green metrics.
From Vision To Reality
The roots of the story wind back a few years. In 2020, The Guardian reported the first funeral in the Netherlands using a mycelium coffin after months of prototyping and lab tests.
That early service signaled a cultural readiness: people were starting to ask not just what legacy they’d leave their loved ones, but what legacy their remains would leave the land.
In May 2022, Positive.News introduced the living coffin to a wider audience, noting rising demand for greener farewells. By the spring of 2023, the Associated Press visited Loop’s growing facility and documented rows of pale, cocoon-like coffins ready for families who wanted their goodbye to be both gentler and wiser.
Crossing Borders And Changing Traditions
Across borders, the idea has taken root. In the United Kingdom, funeral directors in London started offering the mycelium coffin, describing the texture as unlike anything they’d handled and celebrating the option as both beautiful and straightforward to source.
Trade partners say the cocoon is verified for the UK market and compatible with traditional or woodland burials, a small but telling sign that innovation need not be at odds with ritual.
Grief rituals, after all, rely on what our hands can do—wash, lift, carry, place—and the mushroom coffin is designed to be part of that sequence with minimal disruption.
A Gentle Revolution In The United States
This year, the movement crossed the Atlantic. In June 2025, the first burial in North America using a mycelium casket took place on a hillside in Maine. For the family, the choice was about continuity: a garden would later rise where the grave rested, the soil enriched by what the cocoon made possible.
Reporting from local public radio and national tech outlets captured the intimacy of that day—a blend of sorrow and stewardship, and the relief that comes with doing right by both the person and the place. It read less like a novelty and more like a quiet return to common sense.
The Science Of Returning To The Earth
Mycelium is nature’s recycler, a living matrix that breaks down organic matter and can even help neutralize certain toxins.
In burial conditions—where wood, metal, concrete vaults, and embalming often slow decomposition—mycelium offers a different pathway, encouraging the body’s return to soil and, with it, the microbial life that underpins healthy ecosystems.
Loop’s casket is grown from local mushroom species and up-cycled hemp fibers, reducing the footprint of materials and transport.
None of this makes grief lighter. But it can make grief cleaner, stripping away some of the heavy industrial footprint that has crept into modern funerals.
Balancing Tradition And Innovation
There are, of course, reasonable questions. Will conditions always allow a 45-day biodegradation of the casket? Not everywhere; soil, moisture, and temperature matter, and burial regulations vary by jurisdiction.
Can a single innovation “green” the entire end-of-life industry? No—this is one solution among many, alongside natural burials in shrouds, wicker or seagrass caskets, bamboo, or even human composting services where allowed by law. But the mushroom coffin’s promise is tangible: it offers a visible, understandable bridge between personal farewell and planetary care.
Rewriting The Language Of Death
Even the language around death softens when seen through this lens. Instead of “laying to rest,” families talk about “giving back.” Designers speak of “enriching” soil biodiversity. Funeral directors describe the cocoon’s rounded shape and moss bed as kinder to the eye and the hand.
The symbolism is not window dressing; it is pedagogy. A coffin grown in seven days teaches that our bodies are not waste, but inheritance—that the last thing we do can be to feed the future.
A Hopeful Return To The Earth
None of this diminishes tradition; it deepens it. Every culture has stories about returning to the earth. The living coffin translates that older wisdom into modern materials and logistics, meeting families where they are.
It is the difference between sealing grief in a vault and letting grief seed a garden. The Netherlands may be small in land area, but the country has given the world a large idea: that design can be tender, that biology can be a collaborator, and that sustainability can be felt, not just measured.
And if you listen closely at a graveside where such a cocoon is lowered, you might hear it—not a sound, exactly, but a settling. The hush of moss, the patience of soil, the almost audible promise that this is not an end. Somewhere below, filaments are weaving. Somewhere above, a leaf is learning how to hold the light.
End With Heart
In choosing a living coffin, we don’t just lessen our footprint—we offer our last gift to the places that held our lives: richer soil, kinder rituals, and a future fed by love.
