The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of August 2nd: waste plastics for fuels and sneakers, eggs without the chicken, 3D printing, algae-based ketchup packaging, green funerals, biodegradable grills

#10 Green Reaper is revolutionizing the funeral

In Oregon, Elizabeth Fournier has gained notoriety as the “Green Reaper” for advancing the concept of eco-conscious funerals and burials. Fournier’s company, Cornerstone Funeral Services, is the first green funeral home in Portland and she recently wrote The Green Burial Guidebook: Everything You Need to Plan an Affordable, Environmentally Friendly Burial to catalogue all the natural burial choices available in North America.

“My intended audience was people who’ve never heard of natural burial and want to know what the heck is going on, as well as people who keep hearing about it, and think it’s a trend,” she tells the Sierra Club. While the green burial concept began with simple, biodegradable coffins and urns, it has since expanded into more outside-the-box solutions, including a mushroom burial suit whose spores help to detoxify and decompose the body, she adds.
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