Pa. Farm makes biodegrable coffins made from fungus

The Spark

Setas Mushrooms was established in January 2020 growing hundreds of mushrooms. Max Justice, CEO of Setas Mushrooms has found a way to create a final resting place made from mushrooms.

“I use fungus to grow alternatives. And in fact, I've been able to grow alternatives to concrete, plastic insulation as well as coffins and urns. Now, my installation, that's a whole different, topical, different industry. But let's just say that it's made from the exact same thing, the exact same process. There is no difference between my installation and my coffins. The only difference is the mold, the shape in which I grow it. So, I grow a sheet of insulation the same way I would a coffin. And I simply take some of our substrate and our substrate.”

Setas Eternal Living was born out of Justice losing so many loved ones. He wanted to create a more heartfelt meaning to the afterlife.

“I know that our coffins are designed to biodegrade the body of a human in under three years. And I'm halfway through the real world, demonstration of a full-sized pet, a large pet that, being fully, decomposed in less than two years. I just had a chicken that, unfortunately, I lost about a year ago that we exhumed last week. Or maybe it's two weeks ago now, and all I found after a year was two thigh bones and, a few skeletal bones, and that was it.”

Justice explains how biodegradable coffins are made. He says his method was inspired by a company Loop in the Netherlands.

“So they're grown and, a form factor. And I have created a, a mold. But I've learned a lot from the first couple of designs to where we now have a multi-part mold. Mold that we will. We bring together, and we're still working on how we bring that together. Right now, we screw a couple pieces together. We've tried, doing, bands, and we're still in the middle of refining our process. But what we have is a is a good process that helps us grow mold. Exhuming grows coffins. Now, how we grow coffins, we take that fungal, mass, in this case with this Ricci or oysters, and we colonize that into our substrate and are some straight being hemp or our hemp and, cornstalk mix. And we also throw in a little bit of flour a little bit, gypsum or actually drywall. So, any time that we recycle drywall, or we have leftover pieces of drywall, we use that to get to our fungus to grow either fresh gourmet mushrooms, our medicinal mushrooms, or our coffins. They're great. Part of that process.”

According to Justice, embalming is not necessary for the biodegradable coffins.

“In fact, it's recommended that you don't. Because really, once you embalm somebody, you're putting chemicals into a person, and then those chemicals are leached into the ground. So, from an environmental purpose, we want to be as natural as possible. Going back to the Earth, naturally.”

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