UK company offers alternative to land-based burials after success of memorials in Bali made from remains of pets
Death is killing our planet. That is the stark assessment of a new business offering an innovative alternative: having your loved one’s ashes made into a reef and anchored to the British seabed.
There are increasing concerns about the environmental cost of traditional funerals: a single burial generates 833kg of CO2, while a typical cremation has a footprint of about 400kg of CO2. In the US alone, 1.6m tonnes of concrete and 14,000 tonnes of steel is used each year for building graves. Chemicals from embalming processes seep into the soil.
But now a British startup, Resting Reef, is redefining what a cemetery can be by turning the ashes of humans into memorial reef structures. “Cemeteries should be places that reconnect us with nature and remind us that we’re part of a larger ecosystem,” said Aura Pérez, the company’s co-founder, who met her business partner, Louise Skajem, when they were doing their master’s degrees at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.
Resting Reef uses aquamation, an alkaline process for cremation, to combine pet or human ashes with crushed oyster shells and concrete into a material proven to enhance marine growth.
