This Business Project Is Hoping to Turn You Into a Tree

Healthy Holistic Living always strives to gives you knowledge that enriches your life. But this article focuses more on the dead, and how our bodies could directly supply a tree with the nutrients it needs…long after we are gone.

It’s an innovative burial method developed in Italy. The Capsula Mundi project by designers Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel might make the idea of a coffin seem archaic if we have the option to purchase an organic, biodegradable capsule that will decompose our bodies into a fertile egg for a tree to survive off of one day.

The Idea

To Citelli and Bretzel, the tree represents a union of the earth and sky, material and immaterial, body and soul. This idea is very cyclical and sustaining. It connects life and death and breaks the barrier between nature and human beings.

Pretty cool, right? Here are the benefits of this interesting method:

The project’s site has a number of trees to choose from. Their trees come from three regions: The Central/Mountain, Atlantic and Mediterranean areas of Europe.
The project can transform entire memorial parks from rows of tombstones to sacred forests.
Your loved ones and descendants can visit and care for your tree.

It promotes the planting of trees. More trees equals cleaner air.
Instead of cutting down trees to make caskets, you would be saving one tree while growing one more.
The possibilities go beyond human beings. Deceased pets could partake in this green option too.

So how does this eco-friendly capsule work?

When you die, your body will be encapsulated in the fetal position. Many people see this as the human life truly coming full circle since we were born out of the fetal position, in our mother’s womb.

The giant egg, or capsule, is made of starch-plastic, a 100% biodegradable material taken from seasonal plants such as potatoes and corn.

The capsule would then be buried and your selected tree would be planted just above it. The tree’s roots will connect to the egg and feed off the nutrients inside.

Where can I sign up?!

Unfortunately, this project is still just an idea. The method is forbidden under Italian burial laws. However, Citelli and Bretzel are working to get the laws changed.

A company named Bios Urn also has a green way for managing the deceased. They sell biodegradable urns. You plant a seed in the urn with a bit of soil from where you wish to plant it and a tree is produced from your remains!

This approach is legal and most likely much less expensive than a human sized biodegradable egg, but you’ll have to wait a while before you see the tree in all its majestic glory.

The point of all these burial alternatives is to give back to nature when we die rather than take anything away, and that is something that many future generations could have the opportunity to enjoy.