Capsula Mundi: Biodegradable Burial Pods

Rather than cutting down trees to make coffins and caskets, cemeteries could be replaced by forests with the help of an burial invention that utilizes the leftover nutrients of bodies or cremated remains as fertilizer for saplings. Italian inventors Raoul Bretzel and Anna Citelli are behind the design of Capsuli Mundi, an environmentally friendly body disposition method. The Capsula Mundi company website asks its consumers to help make their dream of a living cemetery real:

"Cemeteries will acquire a new look: no more cold grey tombstones but living trees creating a forest, a holy forest. A place with a sentimental value, where families can stroll with kids and teach them about different trees. Let’s plant a tree for each of us and cemeteries will become forests!"

Currently, Capsula Mundi is available in different sizes to contain the cremated remains of humans or to hold pets. The pod is made in an egg-like shape out of biodegradable materials. It is essentially an urn designed to decompose and break down to allow a tree to feed off of the nutrients from the remains. Ashes buried directly into the ground can be harmful to plant life due to the high PH level, but the pod is designed specifically to negate harm by breaking down slowly in order to allow the soil and ashes to mix more gently. The Capsula Mundi developers explain the process in the Frequently Asked Questions section of their website:

"This slow dispersion process helps to equilibrate the soil action: the soil is a powerful buffer solution and it is therefore able to neutralize the high PH level of the ash, it just needs time. In addition, the rainwater that penetrates into the soil gradually dissolves the sodium and potassium salts, which become attractive and useful for the growth of the plants."

New life is fueled from death. The capsules can be buried near an already grown tree, or a sapling chosen by loved ones can be planted above the pod and can grow anew as a living memorial to the dead.

Instructions from the Capsula Mundi website's shopping page are as follows:

The second phase of Capsula Mundi is still in development, although the design appears to have been finalized. Capsula Mundi were designed as a method to legally enable natural burial under Italian laws requiring bodies to be buried in some sort of a casket. However, legality issues are currently preventing the second type of Capsula Mundi to go from theory to reality. The pods would be much larger and able to hold an body in the fetal position and allow it to be buried with a sapling attached. While the pods used for cremation look like pearlescent eggs, the theoretical pods for full body burials are much more natural in their appearance with a layer of soil acting as a shell.

Ideally, the pods containing bodies would be planted in groups to grow forests and have a GPS method of identifying the person associated with each tree. This could also allow for forests that must remain untouched by construction or destruction and bring small forests into more developed areas that have less plant life. When the body pod enters the production stage, Raoul Bretzel and Anna Citelli's dream of a sacred forest could become reality in places where natural burials are already legal, such as in the United States.

Until death do us part,

Alyssa

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Sources & Further Reading

CNN - Biodegradable Burial Pod Turns Your Body Into a Tree

Capsula Mundi