The company, Loop, says its casket is made of mycelium, the underground root structure of mushrooms, and filled with a bed of moss to stimulate decomposition.
"Mycelium is nature's biggest recycler", Bob Hendrikx, the creator of the living coffin told Reuters.
"It's continuously looking for food and transforming it into plant nutrition."
Mycelium also devours toxins and turns them into nutrients.
"It's used in Chernobyl to clean up the soil there from the nuclear disaster", Hendrikx said.
"And the same thing happens in our burial places, because the soil is super polluted there and mycelium really likes metals, oils and microplastics."
The coffin is grown like a plant within the space of a week at the company's lab at the Technical University of Delft by mixing mycelium with wood chips in the mould of a coffin.
After the mycelium has grown through the wood chips, the coffin is dried and has enough strength to carry a weight of up to 200 kilograms (440 lb). Reuters
— Loop (@loopbiotech) September 14, 2020
