Eco-coffins in South Africa

What kind of coffin would you like to be buried in?

This is the question that environmentalists and church leaders in South Africa are asking prominent figures around the world as they prepare to launch a unique initiative by the end of the year.

The plan is to make coffins out of the timber of invasive tree species, selling some at cost to poor people through churches and Hindu temples, and eventually selling the rest at a higher price to wealthier families around the world who will effectively be supporting the whole initiative.

ARC has been asked to assist this project, and we’re excited by it. It is a winning combination: using wood from trees that have to be cleared, employing people who might otherwise be unemployed, helping poor families cope with the financial side of funerals, helping richer people assist the whole process through choosing to be buried in eco-coffins, and thus subsidising other, poorer, people to pay for their own family funerals.

	"If these alien invasive tree species were left to propagate naturally, they would cause a serious water-table crisis in South Africa within two decades," Guy Preston, Working for Water.

Invasive, alien tree species in South Africa include certain eucalypts, pines and wattles: species that in Africa have no natural predators. It is estimated that if they were left to propagate naturally, they would cause a serious water-table crisis within two decades. The South African government currently employs around 30,000 people every year - many of them would not otherwise be able to find employment - to cut down these trees.

The Eco-coffin project was the winner of the World Bank's 2005 Development Marketplace Award for Innovation.

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