is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals.
“I’m probably the only architect who created a final home,” Bob Hendrikx tells The Verge. Tombs and catacombs aside, Hendrikx might be the only one to make a final home using mushrooms.
Hendrikx is the founder and CEO of Loop Biotech, a company that makes caskets out of mycelium, the fibrous root structure of mushrooms. This June, the first burial in North America to use one of Loop Biotech’s caskets took place in Maine.
“He always said he wanted to be buried naked in the woods.”
The mushroom casket gives people one more option to leave the living with a gentler impact, part of a growing array of what are supposed to be more sustainable alternatives to traditional burials. Mycelium has also had a moment in recent years, with other eco-conscious designers making biodegradable packaging, leather, and bricks from the material.
Hendrikx started out trying to make a “living home” from mycelium, a material that can be used to make self-healing structures if the fibers continue to grow. While he was studying architecture at Delft University of Technology, he says someone asked him what would happen if their grandma happened to die in that home.
Bob Hendrikx and Marsya Ancker at a ceremony for her father in Maine. Photo courtesy of Loop Biotech
“It would be great, because there’s going to be so much positivity for Earth,” he recalls answering and then thinking — “Oh my God, this should be a casket.” The mushroom casket became his graduation project, and Hendrikx started Loop Biotech in the Netherlands in 2021.
The casket, which Loop Biotech calls a “Living Cocoon” and sells for around $4,000, is made entirely of mycelium and can be grown in seven days. It can then biodegrade completely in about 45 days, according to the company. The body inside, however, takes longer. In a typical casket, it could be decades before a body fully decomposes. But since fungi can help break down dead organic matter, that time shortens to two to three years in a Living Cocoon, Hendrikx says.
“I personally hate the idea of a body just lying there in the ground,” says Marsya Ancker, whose father, Mark Ancker, was laid to rest in a Living Cocoon in Maine in June. “I don’t want to lie in the ground, but I’m happy to become part of the soil and feed the plants.” She heard about Loop Biotech in a TED Talk years ago and decided to call up the company the day after she got the call that her dad had passed.
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