New product companies fill real needs with style

New product companies fill real needs with style

Side by side with this public front are an equally dynamic group of forward-thinking business entrepreneurs and artisan-manufacturers. Some are producing attractive biodegradable burial vessels made from natural and recycled materials, while others are pioneering natural burials by starting modern "eco-cemeteries" around the world, dedicated to modeling the perfection that a natural "heaven on earth" might look like if it were here.

The most progressive of the bunch are actually re-inventing the business from the inside out, taking existing cemeteries (rather than pristine land that ought to stay no-impact) and converting them to sustainable cemetery management techniques so that the process is accessible to everyone, even those in densely populated urban areas that don't use cars!

These companies and individuals are doing for the industrialized funeral sector what organic farmers and food producers have done for the agricultural arena in the US and across the world when they first began to serve an unmet but very real consumer demand for clean food, while working to change the conventional practices of a huge industry whose techniques have had a detrimental environmental impact.

And new natural grave goods are stimulating a renaissance in the once-thriving weaving arts: Recycled paper and alternative fibers are made into caskets and coffins. Handcrafted woven items are making a comeback in the form of willow, bamboo, sea-grass and other woven-fiber containers, while fabric artists fashion imaginative shrouds of organic cotton, silk and hemp.

Unique new burial vessels like the Ecopod recycled paper coffin,  SAWD's Fair Trade certified bamboo, Somerset Willow's artisan-crafted homegrown willow "basket caskets", FTP's seagrass, hyacinth and banana leaf, Eco-coffins cardboard coffins, and the ARKA Acorn ash-burial urn appeal to environmentally minded folks who want to depart from life as naturally as they’ve lived it.

Each year, more natural versions of traditional funeral goods are coming onto the scene - it's hard to keep up with them all!  Many of the manufacturers and distributors are working hard to bring people the information, services and products needed to make even their final act a positive and self-reliant one.

All-natural since 1852

All-natural since 1852

Back in 1852, when Hästens started making beds, our environment was not on many people’s agendas. But rest assured, it was on ours. Because we knew then, as we do now, that natural is always better. Not only for your comfort, but for our environment as well.

And just like back in the day, we still use only all-natural materials in our beds; such as the finest pure flax, wool and cotton, carefully selected pine – growing at a natural pace for maximum strength – and genuine, hypoallergenic horsehair.  

The difference is not merely something you can see. It is something you can feel – and feel good about. To think, you can actually change the world, if only by a little, every night, in your sleep.

Hästens is collaborating with Sweden's prime wool expert, Alan Waller.

BEAUTI OF NUTURE

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic.

The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers, and has steadily gained currency ever since. This usage was confirmed during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.

Nature of Africa

In the United Kingdom, for almost 20 years now, a compelling new consumer movement has been underway. Natural burial grounds — where people are buried in biodegradable containers, without formaldehyde-based embalming fluid or synthetic ingredients, and returned to the earth to compost into soil nutrients with a forest of trees marking the spot—are springing up across this island nation.

Since 2005, when I first began documenting this trend, dozens (if not hundreds) of sites offering some form of natural burial have emerged in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada, with other countries coming on fast. Citizen-driven movements in support of natural burial can now be found in Europe, China, Japan, Germany, and Africa.

Feel The Nature