Latest news with #BobHendrikx
The Verge
19-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Verge
A mushroom casket marks a first for ‘green burials' in the US
'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. '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. 'He would have gotten a kick out of it, out of the fact that he was the first [to be buried in a Living Cocoon],' Marsya adds. Her family's not one to miss an opportunity. Marsya described an iconic photo of her dad sitting on a green Volkswagen bus on the way to Woodstock, looking out over a traffic jam with binoculars, soon after Marsya was born and came home from the hospital. 'Don't be ridiculous,' there's no sense in wasting both their tickets, Marsya says her mom told her dad. 'He always said he wanted to be buried naked in the woods,' Marsya says. 'As a younger person, that horrified me. I'm like, 'But how will I remember you?' … This way he gets to be buried naked in the woods.' And she'll have something there to remember him by; the family planted a memorial garden with some of Mark's favorite perennials on the land where he was buried. Loop Biotech says its mushroom casket will help enrich the soil below. Marsya also finds the chemicals used in embalming 'gross.' A desire to minimize waste and pollution is another reason some people are turning away from standard caskets or cremation. Conventional burials in the US use around 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid, 20 million board feet of hardwood, and 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete each year, according to the Green Burial Council. The first Living Cocoon burial in the US (which follows thousands more using Loop Biotech's mushroom casket in Europe), shows 'there's excitement and energy around green burial,' says Sam Bar, who is part of the board of directors of the Green Burial Council. A 'green' burial doesn't have to incorporate mushrooms, of course. The goal is primarily to encourage decomposition and use natural materials in a sustainable way, Bar says. That can also be accomplished using other materials that break down more easily, like woven sea grass or bamboo. 'Green is a spectrum,' Bar says. Ever the architect, Hendrikx has also kept comfortable design in mind with his Living Cocoon. Aside from the potential environmental benefits, the mushroom casket is also soft to the touch and rounded, he points out to The Verge. 'So instead of having, like, a hard, pointy casket, you now have something that you can actually hug,' Hendrikx says. 'Which is really nice for the grieving process.'
Fast Company
23-06-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
He was buried in a mushroom casket. Soon he'll be part of the soil
When Marsya Ancker-Robert was younger, her father used to tell that her that he wanted to be buried naked, under a tree in the woods. The idea horrified Ancker-Robert, but when her father passed away earlier this June, the first call she made was to a Dutch company called Loop Biotech. Since 2020, Loop Biotech has been making biodegradable caskets out of mycelium, the root-like structure of mushrooms, and hemp. Unlike traditional wooden caskets, which are often treated with chemicals that leech into the soil, the company's offerings are made of natural materials that enrich the soil as they biodegrade—a process that only takes 45 days after burial. So far, Loop Biotech has sold about 2,500 caskets in Europe—primarily in The Netherlands, but also in Germany and other parts of central Europe. But Ancker-Robert's father, Mark Ancker, has just become the first person in the U.S. to be buried in Loop Biotech's mycelium casket, called Living Cocoon. 'It was dignified, and beautiful,' says Ancker-Robert, who buried her father in a forest clearing on his property. 'I have confidence that my dad will be fully part of the garden by winter.' Growing caskets Loop Biotech was founded in 2020 by Bob Hendrikx, an architect and biodesigner known for his affinity for nature-based solutions, like a Living Bin that uses sea anemones to 'eat' or compost our trash, or a Living Bench that uses algae water to cleanse the air around it. It is part of growing cohort of start-ups shaking up the $622 million green burial market with nature-based solutions. Resting Reef, from London, turns cremated ashes into underwater memorials that double as coral reefs. Coeio, from California, makes burial suits out of mushrooms and other organisms that accelerate decomposition. For Hendrikx, nature was always the starting point. When the designer first came up with the idea for a mycelium casket, he wasn't looking for sustainable solutions to burial. He was looking for ways to harness mycelium's natural ability to recycle dead organic matter into nutrient-rich soil. He knew that mycelium thrives best in soil, which led him to question the kinds of applications it could most benefit. 'We call it organism-centered design,' he says, contrasting the approach with human-centered design. Today, Loop caskets are made with mycelium, hemp, and nothing else. The two ingredients are mixed and poured into a mold, and a coffin grows out of that mold in just seven days. But nailing down the exact formula took several years. 'Too long,' says Hendrikx with a laugh. Mycelium is a finicky organism that needs the right conditions to grow and is influenced by several environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, CO₂, and oxygen. Even the moon, which influences air pressure on Earth, can have an effect, he says: 'Collaborating with nature really allows you to see this interconnectivity of the ecosystem.' The company has a 1,500-square-meter growing facility in Delft, with the capacity to grow 500 caskets at a time. In order to scale, he wants to double the production capacity and potentially speed up the growth, too. This facility is what the company calls their blueprint. Once it is optimized, Hendrikx is hoping to replicate the model outside The Netherlands and grow the caskets locally, using local materials. The company has raised just over $3 million to date, and is planning a new funding round to finance the expansion. And for Hendrikx, the road to success transcends mycelium caskets. 'Once we are profitable, we've shown the world that you can enrich nature while making money, so it's a business case for a regenerative business model,' he says. A first for the U.S. The burial in Maine marks a new chapter in the company's journey, with mycelium caskets ($3,995) and urns ($395) now available to customers nationwide. But Hendrikx says he's been getting requests for years. America is experiencing a green burial revolution. The total number of green burial cemeteries in the U.S. has quadrupled over the past 10 years, going from just over 100 in 2015 to more than 400 by 2025. Over the past two decades, the nonprofit Green Burial Council has seen a 72% increase in demand from cemeteries for more sustainable end-of-life options. Loop Biotech's expansion will likely depend on how willing people are to spend a few extra dollars on a biodegradable casket. An entry-level casket in the United States hovers around $800 for a simple metal burial casket, though average costs range from about $2,000 to $5,000. It will also depend on how fast the company establishes a robust infrastructure in the country. Already, Hendrikx has built a network of distribution partners and sustainable funeral homes that offer green burial alternatives. They also have a warehouse in L.A. where they can ship their products from. But if your local funeral home doesn't offer mycelium caskets, and you've never heard about the company, you may never know it exists. Ancker-Robert found out about Loop Biotech from a Tedx talk that Hendrikx gave in January, and she was really surprised she was the first person to order one. As it happens, Loop Biotech was gearing up to launch in the U.S. on World Environment Day when she called. Ancker-Robert allowed Hendrikx to film the ceremony, which turned into a small act of generosity for the planet. People made offerings of his favorite foods as well as flowers that Ancker-Robert will plant right above her father's resting place so they can grow into a perennial flower garden. 'The process is helping to turn the grieving process into one of creation and gives me something to daydream about instead of focusing on the loss,' she says. 'I would much prefer to think of my father as part of the garden than as a dead body lying in the ground.' Ancker-Robert describes her father a free spirit who, in the '80s, would jump into dumps to salvage food and drive around his community to distribute it. 'There's a famous picture of the traffic jam on the way to Woodstock. In it there is a young man in a striped shirt sitting on a VW bus looking at the traffic with binoculars,' she says. 'That's my dad.' The final deadline for Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Friday, June 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
