{"id":10959,"date":"2020-09-17T12:31:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T19:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=10959"},"modified":"2020-09-27T12:42:47","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T19:42:47","slug":"eaten-by-mycelium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/09\/17\/eaten-by-mycelium\/","title":{"rendered":"Eaten By Mycelium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from VICE<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u2018Living\u2019 Coffin Uses Mushrooms to Compost Dead Bodies<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018Living Cocoon\u2019 has already been used in one burial, at the Hague<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Becky Ferreira<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
HENDRIKX WITH THE ‘LIVING COCOON’ COFFINS. <\/em>
IMAGE: BOB HENDRIKX — LOOP BIOTECH<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For tens of thousands of years, humans have developed funeral rites and burial practices that reflected the attitudes of their particular time and place. These traditions of honoring the dead continue to evolve into the 21st century, as people seek \u201cgreen burials\u201d that are more environmentally friendly than standard coffins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the newest examples comes from Loop, a\u00a0Dutch biotech company<\/a>\u00a0that recently unveiled a biodegradable coffin made of fungus, microbes and plant roots. Called the \u201cLiving Cocoon,\u201d the coffin is designed to hasten bodily decomposition while also enriching soil around the plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNormally, what we do as humans is we take something out of nature, we kill it, and we use it,\u201d said Bob Hendrikx, founder of Loop, in a call. \u201cSo I thought: what if we humans start moving from working with dead materials toward a world in which we work with living materials?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe would not only become less of a parasite, but we could also start exploring super-cool material properties, like living lights, walls that are self-healing, and that kind of stuff,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hendrikx was inspired to develop the Living Cocoon while\u00a0presenting a living home concept<\/a>\u00a0at last year\u2019s Dutch Design Week. While houses are obviously for the living, Hendrikx got to thinking about adapting the concept into a coffin powered by mushroom mycelium, which is the filamentary vegetative part of the fungus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMycelium is nature\u2019s biggest recycler,\u201d Hendrikx said. \u201cIt is continuously looking for dead organic matter to transform into key nutrients.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ continue reading at VICE<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from VICE This \u2018Living\u2019 Coffin Uses Mushrooms to Compost Dead Bodies The \u2018Living Cocoon\u2019 has already been used in one burial, at the Hague By Becky Ferreira For tens of thousands of years, humans have developed funeral rites and burial practices that reflected the attitudes of their particular time and place. These traditions of honoring the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}