Tree Pod Burials: An Innovative, Eco-Friendly Memorial Option
The Future of Burial
Though there is a new shift in thinking and talking about death, tree pod burials still have an upward battle. The same can be said for natural burials in general, as public perception tends to skew more towards the status quo.
Regulations, standards, and laws differ across states and countries, all reflecting different attitudes and beliefs about death and how we humans should deal with it. Therefore, Tree Pod burials are currently not an option in the US.
It's a nice day. Blue sky above the leaves, a few puffy white clouds, sunlight trickling down in soft rays between gaps in the branches. A brush of breeze, birds calling, squirrels and rabbits rustle in the underbrush. You traverse at a comfortable pace, maybe accompanied by someone you care about, someone who cares about you. You're chatting, mostly about things unimportant, but very meaningful. Or perhaps you're quiet, subsumed in the hushed hubbub of a forest.
"Is this it?" Your companion asks. You've stopped at a large, fully-grown tree, solid, sturdy, and comfortable-looking. You consult your phone, a note from your pocket, or a pamphlet map in your hand, reading the series of GPS coordinates pointing to the circled location.
"I think so," you say. Your vision sweeps across the base of the tree's trunk, landing on a familiar rock etched with a familiar name and a heart etched by a very familiar hand.
"Yeah. This is it."
Placing your hand against the bark, you imagine the internal, too-slow-to-see thriving of the living wood.
"Hi, Mom," you say. Or, "Hi, Dad," or "Grandma and Grandpa."
You and your companion lay out and enjoy a little picnic, spend some time forest-bathing, then pack up to leave, saying a warm goodbye to your late loved one interred beneath the tree. Nearby, other individuals and families do the same. Forest cemeteries such as this are one of the dreams of the green burial movement.
When examining some of the more popular and contemporary practices in the funeral industry — embalming fluids, specialty coffins and caskets, strong burial vaults — what is considered a normal burial in today's terms comes with a whole host of negative consequences for the surrounding environment. Embalming fluids are toxic to soil, plants, and beneficial microbes as they break down in the body and leak out into the ground. Coffins are often made with wood from endangered or exotic trees and chemically treated to resist biodegrading further. Burial vaults serve as further barriers to corpses touching dirt, often made of concrete or strengthened steel, each with its own sizable manufacturing carbon footprint.
Each element along the way is designed to disrupt or delay the natural process of remains being broken down by decomposer organisms. This means less repurposed nutrients feeding and strengthening an ecosystem. The natural burial movement and green burial practices seek to consciously combat these harmful effects and to change the industry into one that focuses on a legacy of ecological conservation. Tree pod burials are one way this can be achieved.
Understanding Tree Pod Burials
What are Tree Pod Burials?
Tree pods are egg-shaped, biodegradable caskets made of organic materials like cardboard, bamboo, and cotton. In some cases wrapped in nothing but a shroud (also made of natural fibers), the body to be buried receives no preparation whatsoever.
The body is placed in a fetal position inside the pod, which could be seen as symbolic of the metaphorical and literal rebirth of a person's remains after a natural burial. More natural fibers are then wrapped around the pod, sometimes with added enzymes and beneficial microbes found in the body and the soil to encourage decomposition and reabsorption.
Then the pod is buried either with a new sapling above it or within the roots of a fully-grown tree. Over time, the pod and body decompose naturally, providing nutrients to nourish the tree, the surrounding plants, and the mycelium network buried in the earth. Since this fungal web allows trees to communicate and share nutrients, a body’s base components do good for more than just the tree it's buried beneath.
Selecting the Right Tree
Depending on the options offered by the cemetery, tree pods can either be buried under a sapling or a fully-grown tree.
While choosing a sapling might make sense from a memorialization perspective, as that tree would only be for the dearly departed underneath, a concern lies with the fact that young trees have a greater potential for special care to ensure proper growth. In short, there’s no guarantee a sapling will survive into adult tree-hood. Fully grown trees need less upkeep, already have an established foothold (or rather, roothold) within the ecosystem, and benefit all the same from nutritious decomposition.
If person-specific memorialization is an important consideration, there are many ways to remember our dead if they choose a tree pod burial with a full-grown tree. Their surviving loved ones could plant another sapling elsewhere in their honor. Local flowers, grasses, and shrubs planted nearby serve the same purpose and also help with a green cemetery’s conservation efforts. Lots of cemeteries allow small markers such as natural rock or wooden plaques. Sometimes, friends and family members create collaborative art projects to leave near the grave. Most of the time, they’ll also be able to find the gravesite easily with exact GPS coordinates provided by the cemetery.
The Evolution of Tree Pod Burials
Tree pod burials and natural burials require a shift in how we humans think, talk, and act, about death and burial.
Ancient Origins of Tree Pod Burials
Using trees as part of human intervention is not a new concept in the history of the world. Balinese, Naga, and Aboriginal Australians used burial trees as a practice, as did many First Nations Americans on the plains, like the Ponca. However, their reasons were a bit different. Corpses were enshrouded and tied to high branches, ensuring bodies would not accidentally become unearthed in heavy rain, that wolves wouldn’t dig up and consume the remains, and so that the surviving loved ones could more easily talk to their departed ancestors.
The practice may have also started as a way to inter the dead during winter, when frozen ground was harder to break. Even though the practice differs from tree pod burials, the idea still involves allowing a body to be broken down naturally by the elements and time. Tree pod burials combine the idea of a tree as a symbol of life and death with our modern practices of putting bodies in the ground.
Contemporary Challenges and Innovations
In 2016, Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel, two designers from Italy, came up with the idea and started their company, Capsula Mundi (“the world’s capsule,” Latin.) Since then, a few other companies have started with the same idea. However, there happens to be a catch to this dream. To date, no one has been buried full-body in this way.
There are a few reasons for this. Regulations, standards, and laws differ across states and countries, all reflecting different attitudes and beliefs about death and how we humans should deal with it. Funerary practices have been in place for thousands of years with little change or consideration for the effects on the environment.
Though there is a new shift in thinking and talking about death, tree pod burials still have an upward battle. The same can be said for natural burials in general, as public perception tends to skew more towards the status quo. There are local news stories from across the internet about natural cemeteries having difficulty getting their practices approved, like one about local laws changing to require some sort of barrier around natural burials because neighbors were worried about leakage. The ironic thing is, that the only reason leakage would seep onto surrounding property would be because of current embalming practices.
But there's still hope. Capsula Mundi (and others) do offer a smaller biodegradable urn meant to house the ash cremation of a dead person. The urn is still planted in the ground beneath a tree, whether a sapling or fully grown.
Though this option still seeks to stay within the definition of a natural burial, it’s a little more of a hybrid type since cremation has a sizable carbon cost. For a greener option, the process of alkaline hydrolysis — also known as 'water cremation’ — uses a fraction of the energy needed for flames, while providing next of kin with the same result. This is still a newer process also facing regulatory hurdles.
Why Tree Pod Burials?
As one mode of natural burials, tree pods are an intriguing and romantic option with real-world benefits and positive impacts.
Tree pod burials combine the idea of a tree as a symbol of life and death with our modern practices of putting bodies in the ground.
Tree Planting and Ecosystem Enhancement
One of the most obvious benefits is the addition of a new tree to the world or bolstering a grown one.
Not only are trees an excellent way to convert greenhouse gasses into breathable oxygen, but their root systems help fight erosion, their fallen leaves contribute to healthy topsoil, and their branches, bark, and trunks become home and shelter for a vast amount of creatures from the microscopic to megafauna.
In short, as the popular adage says, “The best time to plant a tree is yesterday; the second best is today.” More trees, and more healthier trees, contribute to a better, cleaner, and more vibrant environment for everyone.
Reduction of Carbon Footprint
The use of tree pods in burials also minimizes the carbon footprint of a single, conventional interment.
The pods themselves are crafted from biodegradable, recycled, and upcycled materials that in time will break down and allow the body inside to be broken down in turn. Since natural burials eschew the unnecessary process of embalming a corpse, there are no toxic chemicals introduced to the soil.
Furthermore, without embalming fluid, the components of decomposed human remains return to the earth and enter a natural recycling process, much like fallen leaves eventually become topsoil in which new life may take root.
Manual Digging and Symbolic Participation
Oftentimes when treepod burials are carried out with full-grown trees, natural cemeteries will opt for manually dug graves. Heavy machinery could accidentally damage the tree, and they belch tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Using shovels and hand-operated tools could also be a potential activity for family and friends to partake in, which could be a very cathartic and symbolic way to say goodbye, aiding in the grieving process.
Reimagining Land Use and Cultural Practices
Another concern of the modern funeral industry that tree pod burials seek to address is the question of land use.
Like in the introductory illustration, forests with trees marking the gravesites of loved ones give new life to cemetery grounds, which as a whole take up a large chunk of real estate just in the US alone. Creating green spaces for parks, permaculture efforts, and nature preserves, revisualizes and reinvents land that would otherwise be stagnant for a single purpose.
In Victorian England, one of their cultural pastimes was to stroll, picnic, and spend time with extant loved ones in city cemeteries and church graveyards. This was seen as a healthy way to recognize and reflect on mortality and celebrate the short lives humans live. Forest cemeteries with tree pod burials could bring about a resurgence of this ethos, a weaving together of life and death.
Planting Seeds for the Future:
Bringing Tree Pods Burials Mainstream
Although full-body tree pod burials without the use of cremation practices are still a long way off, it doesn’t mean the idea has to be abandoned altogether.
Many other modes of natural and alternative burials are provided and available right now, which helps public perception and widens the availability of all the possibilities a burial can be, including tree pods.
Most of the roadblocks for these types of burial take the form of regulatory structures at local, state, and sometimes federal levels, making it difficult for an alternative burial philosophy to gain a substantial enough foothold.
Proponents of natural burial practices can have a hand in bringing forth a greener future to all aspects of death; contacting representatives and getting involved at different levels of government could help change policies. The more people who desire and demand tree pods and other alternative burials, the better chance that the funeral industry will leave unnecessary and outdated techniques based on mistaken beliefs about the danger human decomposition poses in the past where they belong.
In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed only transformed into another form. Besides the literal way this happens with natural decomposition, many take this to mean that a person’s essence doesn't disappear altogether when they die, it only moves into a new state of being, perhaps entering an afterlife, or remaining on the mortal plane as a spirit.
If the result of death and burial is a wealth of verdant, lush flora, then maybe dying doesn’t have to feel so scary. Imagine how peaceful it would be to haunt a tree, basking in the sun and growing, just growing.