There’s no denying it: Burying bodies is a huge waste of space that could be used by the rest of us who are still breathing. Even cremation, though cheaper and easier, can produce a lot of toxic waste.
But what if your dead body could be turned into a tree instead? Italian designers Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel are proposing just that, in the form of a biodegradable burial-pod project.
The “Capsula Mundi,” as it’s known, would encase a corpse in an egg-shaped seed capsule and then be buried underground with trees on top of them. As your body decomposes, the tree would gather nutrients from the decomposing pod, and the circle of life would march on.
The idea is just a hypothetical sketch at this point, but if it ever came to be reality, cemeteries would be replaced with lush memorial gardens.
“No designer ever thinks of a coffin,” the designers wrote on their website, “but this becomes a way of reflecting on how distant we are from Mother Nature.”
Interest piqued? Read more about it here.