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“Which tree would you like to be?”

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That is the question being asked by Italian designers Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel, who have created a coffin allowing people to be buried in egg-shaped capsules attached to the roots of trees.

Citelli and Bretzel, see the new coffin as an alternative to most typical burials, which are expensive and consume natural resources. By placing what they call the “Capsula Mundi” underneath a tree of the person’s choosing, the designers hope to change how we think about traditional coffins.

“Capsula Mundi is made of biodegradable materials,” Citelli explained. “Inside, the body is placed in a fetal position, and a tree is planted above the burial. The plant will grow, indicating where it took place.”

As the body decays, the cells biodegrade and are released as nutrients into the soil, helping the tree grow.

Citelli and Bretzel have been working on the design of the tree pod for a decade, and produced a handcrafted prototype last year. They recently started a Kickstarter page to raise money for the industrial version of the coffin, which would make it easier to produce many of the pods at a lower cost.

Traditional burial methods usually require cutting down trees for coffins, mining rock for headstones and concrete barriers, and the production of chemicals like formaldehyde for embalming fluid.