In a warehouse in Delft, Netherlands, a row of grey-white coffin-shaped forms sits on industrial racks under controlled humidity. They look almost like polystyrene from a distance — the same dull off-white texture, the same lightweight feel. They’re not. Each one is made entirely of mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, grown over six to seven days from a mixture of hemp fiber and proprietary fungal strains.
Jump to:
The company is Loop Biotech, founded by Dutch inventor Bob Hendrikx in 2020. The product is the Living Cocoon, a fully compostable burial coffin that breaks down in 30 to 45 days after burial. Some funeral programs that buy from Loop pair each Living Cocoon with a tree sapling planted on the gravesite. The tree’s roots eventually integrate with the compost remnant of the coffin and its occupant, creating a memorial that’s literally a tree.
It’s one of the more visually striking examples of compostable products entering an industry — death care — that’s been remarkably slow to change. Here’s the actual product, the regulatory landscape, the cost, and what it means.
How the coffin is made
The manufacturing process at Loop Biotech is essentially industrial mushroom farming, scaled up:
- A coffin-shaped mold is filled with a substrate of hemp fiber, water, and a small amount of proprietary nutrient mix.
- The mold is inoculated with mycelium spores of a specific fungal species (Loop has stayed somewhat coy about the exact species; Ganoderma lucidum and Pleurotus ostreatus are publicly mentioned).
- The mold sits in controlled temperature and humidity conditions for six to seven days while the mycelium colonizes the substrate.
- The grown coffin is removed from the mold, briefly heated to deactivate the live fungal growth (so it doesn’t continue growing in transit), and packaged for shipment.
The finished Living Cocoon weighs approximately 30 kg (about 65 lbs), can support up to 200 kg (440 lbs), and is dimensionally similar to conventional coffins. The exterior is smooth and pale grey-white. The interior contains an organic mat for the body to rest on, also fully compostable.
What happens after burial
Once buried, the mycelium structure is no longer alive (the heat treatment killed the live fungus), but the material is highly bio-available to soil organisms. Soil bacteria, fungi, earthworms, and other decomposers colonize the coffin material within days of burial.
Decomposition timeline in well-drained soil at typical European burial depth (1 to 2 meters):
- Days 0 to 7: Soil moisture penetrates the coffin walls; microbial colonization begins.
- Days 7 to 21: Active decomposition. The mycelium structure begins to lose integrity. Hemp fibers begin to break down.
- Days 21 to 35: Most of the structural form is gone. Only fragments remain.
- Days 35 to 45: Complete breakdown to soil-compatible humus.
This is dramatically faster than a conventional wooden coffin (which can persist 10 to 50 years depending on wood type and soil conditions) and incomparably faster than a metal or plastic-lined coffin (effectively never).
The body itself, of course, decomposes on its own biological timeline — typically 10 to 25 years for skeletal reduction in normal burial conditions. The coffin material doesn’t accelerate or slow that process meaningfully. What it does change is the soil chemistry around the burial: the mycelium material breaks down into humus that supports root growth and microbial communities, in contrast to conventional coffins which can create anaerobic pockets around bodies and slow natural decomposition.
The tree-planting integration
Some funeral programs — particularly in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and the UK — pair Loop’s Living Cocoon with a tree sapling planted directly on the gravesite. The intended outcome is that as the coffin breaks down and the body decomposes, the resulting nutrients feed the tree’s growing root system.
The biology of this is real but more gradual than the marketing suggests. The nitrogen and minerals released during body decomposition over years do feed surrounding soil, including planted trees. The mycelium coffin’s relatively quick breakdown doesn’t directly create a “tree from a body” but it does prepare the soil for the tree’s root system to establish.
Programs that have integrated this approach typically use native tree species suited to the local conditions — oak, beech, hawthorn in much of Europe. Some forest cemeteries (a growing category in the Netherlands and Germany) specifically design layouts where each burial corresponds to a planted tree, creating memorial forests over decades.
The Dutch company Earth Funerals (a separate venture, not affiliated with Loop) has been particularly active in this space. They report having created memorial forests with several thousand burials in the Netherlands and parts of Germany.
What it costs
The Living Cocoon retails in Europe at €1,500 to €2,500 depending on country and distributor — meaningfully more than a basic wooden coffin (€500 to €1,200) but less than a high-end hardwood or premium coffin (€3,000 to €10,000+).
In the US, where Loop began selling in 2024 through a distributor network, the price runs $1,800 to $3,000 depending on region. This puts it in the mid-range for US coffin pricing, where the cheapest commercial coffin is around $800 and average funeral costs (including coffin) are $7,000 to $12,000.
Tree-integrated burial packages typically add $200 to $800 to the base coffin cost, depending on the specific cemetery and tree species. Some forest cemeteries include the tree in their plot fees and add no incremental cost.
Regulatory landscape
This is where the story gets more complicated. Burial regulations vary significantly across countries and US states, and not all jurisdictions permit the kinds of natural burial that maximize the Living Cocoon’s environmental benefit.
Netherlands: Permissive. Natural burial in forest cemeteries is fully legal and increasingly common. Loop’s home market.
Germany: Permissive in some states. Most German states allow natural burial in designated forest cemeteries.
UK: Permissive. Over 270 natural burial sites operate in the UK, where biodegradable coffins are standard.
United States: State-by-state. Most US states require a casket of some kind for in-ground burial but don’t specify the casket must be non-biodegradable. So mycelium coffins are legal in most states. However, only about 270 of the roughly 22,000 US cemeteries permit “green burial” — meaning burial without embalming, without concrete vault, in a biodegradable casket. Outside green burial cemeteries, the conventional concrete vault requirement traps the biodegradable casket inside a non-biodegradable container.
Canada: Province-by-province. Permissive in most provinces with growing green burial infrastructure.
The vault requirement is the binding constraint in most US cemeteries. A mycelium coffin inside a concrete vault provides much less environmental benefit because the body doesn’t decompose into the surrounding soil and the coffin’s compostability is moot.
For full environmental benefit, the Living Cocoon needs to be buried in a cemetery that doesn’t require a vault and ideally permits green burial practices. The Green Burial Council certifies cemeteries meeting these standards, and the directory has been growing — approximately 270 certified cemeteries in the US as of 2026.
Cultural and emotional reception
Death care is one of the more emotionally and culturally specific industries any sustainable product enters. The reception of mycelium coffins varies widely:
In the Netherlands, where natural burial has been mainstream for over a decade, the Living Cocoon has been received positively. Dutch funeral directors report families specifically requesting it. Around 5% to 8% of Dutch burials now use some form of natural/biodegradable coffin, a significant fraction of which is Loop’s product.
In the UK, similar enthusiasm in the green burial community. Some traditional funeral directors initially resisted the appearance (the Living Cocoon looks distinctly different from a conventional coffin) but family demand has driven adoption.
In the US, reception is more variable. Coastal urban markets, particularly California, the Pacific Northwest, and the Northeast, have seen meaningful adoption. The South and Midwest have been slower. Funeral home consolidation (the industry is dominated by a few large chains like Service Corporation International) tends to slow product diversification.
In much of Asia and the Middle East, burial practices vary widely by religion and culture. Mycelium coffins may be relevant to certain traditions (Buddhist and Jain practices, certain Christian denominations) but not to others.
Competing products
Loop Biotech is the most visible mycelium coffin maker but not the only company in the compostable death care space. A few others worth knowing:
- Capsula Mundi (Italy) — egg-shaped biodegradable pods that hold cremated ashes, with a tree planted above. Smaller form factor than a full coffin; for cremation-burial hybrid practices.
- Biolan (Finland) — biodegradable urns made from various plant fibers.
- Eternal Reefs (US) — concrete reef structures incorporating ashes, deployed to ocean floor habitats.
- Recompose (US, Washington State) — human composting, a different approach entirely. Bodies are composted in controlled vessels with wood chips, alfalfa, and straw, producing soil for return to family or use in conservation forests. Legal in Washington since 2020, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, California, and a growing number of states.
The broader category — “natural death care” or “green death care” — is small but growing meaningfully. Industry analysts estimate $50 to $200 million in annual revenue across all sustainable death care products in the US in 2025, growing 15 to 25% per year.
What it means for compostable foodware
This isn’t quite the same as compostable foodware, but the underlying biology and infrastructure overlap. Mycelium-based materials are part of the same broader shift from petroleum-derived single-use products to biological-derivative alternatives. The same companies that build mycelium packaging (Ecovative) also influence the death-care mycelium space.
The B2B operators who think about compostable foodware and the consumers who think about compostable burial are typically the same person (or at least overlapping demographics). Both are responding to the same underlying ecological awareness and the same dissatisfaction with petroleum-based single-use products.
The infrastructure also overlaps: cemeteries that permit green burial and composting facilities that handle foodware both need supportive municipal policy and informed customers. Where one grows, the other tends to grow alongside it.
For more on the broader compostable products ecosystem, see compostable bags and compostable food containers. These foodservice products serve different purposes but share the same biological design philosophy as the Living Cocoon — using fungal or plant-based materials that return to soil rather than persist in the environment.
A genuinely strange product, viewed honestly
Mycelium coffins are objectively unusual. Burial in a mushroom-grown container with a tree sapling planted on top doesn’t have many cultural precedents in most Western traditions. The reception has been a mix of enthusiasm, skepticism, religious questioning, and quiet acceptance.
What’s striking is how quickly the product has moved from prototype (Loop’s first prototype was 2020) to commercial availability across multiple countries (by 2025). Mycelium materials are a genuinely useful innovation that’s finding niches in packaging, leather alternatives, building materials, and now death care.
For most readers, the Living Cocoon is more interesting as a case study in mycelium materials than as a personal product decision. For those for whom green burial is meaningful, it’s now a real, regulated, available option in much of Western Europe and parts of the United States. The price is comparable to mid-range conventional coffins, the regulatory permission is growing, and the environmental case is straightforward: 45-day decomposition versus 50+ years.
For B2B sourcing, see our compostable supplies catalog or compostable bags catalog.
Verifying claims at the SKU level: ask suppliers for a current Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) certificate or an OK Compost mark from TÜV Austria, and check that retail-facing copy meets the FTC Green Guides qualifier requirement on environmental claims.