Talk about recycling! The Bios Urn is the first fully biodegradable cremains urn that turns your body, once you are done with it, into a tree. For an alternative to costly, inefficient, environmentally troubling burial in caskets, this dual-chamber burial urn has the seed for a tree within that you bury, along with the ashes of a loved one (human or pet), and together they create a fertile zone for the growth of a new tree. As nature takes its biodegradation course, the whole thing eventually breaks down and becomes part of the sub-soil.
You can choose from a Maple, Pine, Gingko, Beech, Oak, or (pun intended) Ash tree/seed. It's a pretty great Circle of Life set up.
The inventors, a two-man studio in Spain, continue to explore ways to interact with the natural world with innovative new perspectives. They've even done an art show: "Naturalment – Thinking Nature — An art exhibition that explores natural materials, shapes and processes to understand the inner logic of nature. The same logic that then can be applied to products and humans habits."
Today, the average cost of a North American traditional funeral is between $7,000 - $10,000, and caskets can easily cost more than that. The Bios Urn can be shipped anywhere in the world and runs about a hundred dollars plus shipping. The burial industry, in 2014, was a more than $16 billion business, and the vast majority of the practice is truly harmful to the land. Left to nature's own devices, our bodies are intended to decompose and return to the earth, so making a choice that doesn't needlessly prolong that process with wood, cement, metal, and other materials used to "preserve" remains is earth-friendly in the best way.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, all of it to branches and leaves...
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