Spanish designer and experimental artist Martín Azúa has introduced the most appealing urn ever. The Bios Urn is designed to honor life by using the ashes of the recently deceased to fertilize a new tree.

The urn can simply be planted, and the seed will germinate and grow as the biodegradable packaging dissolves over time. From Azúa’s website:

The Bios Urn project reintroduces the human being to the natural circle of life. It is the profaine ritual of regeneration and the return to nature. Bios is a mortuary urn made from biodegradable materials: coconut shell, compacted peat and cellulose.

Personally, I would greatly prefer a tree to a gravestone.
You can even choose what kind of tree you want to be!

Of course, this is only useful having already been cremated, which is honestly not the most eco-friendly process. This article suggests that a single cremation is equivalent to a 500-mile journey in a car.

There are plenty of alternatives to cremation! Have you ever heard of resomation?

If you strive to be green-minded in life, why not continue the trend after death?

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Born on planet Earth, David Telfer McConaghay has since wandered across its surface in search of something which, when found, kindly insists that he continue searching. His immediate family lives in Minneapolis, MN, though he also feels at home in Washington D.C.; Grass Valley, CA; Bogotá, Colombia; and now, almost Boulder, CO. He completed his B.A. in English & Creative Writing at The George Washington University in 2008. Experiences at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm are the primary source of any yogic inspiration David aka Sri Nivasa may express. He plays on Facebook HERE and can be followed on Twitter HERE