As more people seek climate-friendly end-of-life solutions, increasingly popular options include renting a flatpack coffin to reduce your funeral’s carbon footprint
Keeping a lid on your carbon footprint doesn’t stop with your last breath. Your choice of funeral can have a significant environmental impact. In a recent report by the US-based National Funeral Directors Association, 60.5% of those surveyed expressed their interest in greener options including resomation (water cremation) human composting and natural burials.
And while the UK’s funeral preferences are currently split 80:20 between cremations and burials, YouGov research finds that almost a third (29%) of people in the UK would choose alternative committal methods if available.
Sophia Campbell Shaw founder of Woven Farewell Coffins is one of the UK’s 10 willow coffin makers, and keen to take more environmentally friendly options mainstream. “The funeral sector is one of the most polluting sectors,” she tells Positive News from her base in Devon. “One cremation uses as much energy as a 500-mile car trip and releases a staggering 400 kilos of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”
Traditional burials don’t fare much better: in the US alone, 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde is placed in the ground each year in the form of embalming fluids. And many coffins include metal, plastics and caustic glue, she points out.
From this spring, Campbell Shaw is upping her company’s eco-credentials further by offering families the option of renting rather than buying a casket. She points out that in some cultures, include in the US, rental is common. “A person’s memorial is held in a rented casket and the body’s transferred into a cardboard coffin afterwards,” she says.
To reduce the carbon footprint of her coffins, all of Campbell Shaw’s materials are fully biodegradable. Her standard willow coffins are designed with materials that will biodegrade and return to compost, but she now also offers a rental coffin. This is also made of biodegradable materials but designed as a flatpack of panels that can be assembled, dismantled, stored by funeral directors and re-assembled.
Willow is one of the best because it can be grown on land prone to flooding, coppiced twice a year and once harvested it grows right back
“Willow is one of the best because it can be grown on land prone to flooding, coppiced twice a year and once harvested it grows right back,” she says. “It also provides more energy than is used to produce and process it – meaning that its production is net carbon negative.”
Campbell Shaw acknowledges there are cultural and emotional barriers to be overcome in the UK. “Although the Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities actively endorses the idea of renting coffins, funeral directors can be resistant because they feel their customers won’t see it as respectful.”
However, as president of the Association of Green Funeral Directors, William Wainman describes renting a casket as “a very practical idea. After all, we enter this world with nothing, and leave it with nothing more. Why should we need to own the packaging material used to carry us away?”
Campbell Shaw in a willow field before harvesting
Campbell Shaw has also considered the storage issues of a rental casket. Her rental coffin has been made as a new flatpack design inspired by a customer who wanted a coffin to keep in his family and store for use throughout the generations, as a christening gown would be.
It’s constructed of willow panels so it can be easily assembled and disassembled, with a thick ply base and sturdy hemp rope handles. A cardboard coffin sits inside. The foot end of the coffin is removable, allowing the body to be transferred with dignity after the memorial on to the cremation bed or next to the grave for burial.
“After use the casket is sanitised and stored by the funeral directors or returned to us so it can used again, up to 15 times. At the end of its rental life, it’s disassembled and the coffin materials are responsibly recycled,” she says.
Campbell Shaw's rental coffin is designed as a flatpack of panels that can be assembled, dismantled, stored by funeral directors and re-assembled
And that’s helping to tackle another funeral taboo, the cost, Campbell Shaw notes. The price for purchasing one of her hand-woven willow caskets ranges from £650-£800. To rent one of her coffins and a coffin cover is £200, excluding delivery costs. “I’m still surprised at how much it’s frowned upon to prepare a funeral plan.” In 2023, Sun Insurance figures showed the cost of dying went up by 5% to £9,658.
“Offering coffin rentals is one way of showing people that funerals don’t have to be complicated,” she says. “You can honour the person you’ve lost in a simple way.”
Images: Woven Farewell Coffins
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