Ggids

A first happened in Industry, Maine not long ago:  Mark Ancker was buried in a mushroom casket. It was entirely made of mycelium, the intricate root system of fungi. Such caskets take a week to make and are wholly biodegradable, disintegrating in about 45 days. It’s all part of what is called a quiet revolution in burials. Green burials are in demand, and alternatives are being sought. This alternative, the Loop Living Cocoon, is made by a Dutch company Loop Biotech. They’ve done about 2500 such burials in Europe, but the one in rural Maine was the first for the United States. So far, The Green Burial Council has certified about 250 providers and has recorded over 400 green cemeteries over the US and Canada thus highlighting the growing interest in green burials. The emphasis on alternates to traditional burials seeks to be kind to the earth, give back in a way, show that even with our burial we can still contribute to ecology.  

Even for those not ready for a mushroom casket, just recognizing the idea as viable is itself a step to finding better ways than what we do at present.   

There’s a contest going on in the UK: Choosing a tree of the year. I’m sharing that this contest is happening because the idea is rather magnetic and I believe we ought to imitate it and have our own.  From 40 trees ten have made the short list and people will vote on which one ought to be tree of the year. The trees are as different as can be. One is small and skinny, a couple are twisted and more wide than tall, some have beautiful trunks, for others it is the foliage that stand out, whether in shape or size or both. The Woodland Trust sponsors this contest yearly; it is national and the trees on the list come from different parts of the UK.

 I Love trees and in that am far from unique and join numerous others. We owe so much to trees and take them for granted. This contest reminds us of what they contribute and stand for. And that’s exactly what the Woodland Trust aims to do, to help us appreciate how vital trees are to our landscape and to our lives.

Anyone who owns a pet already knows the advantages. Yet it seems there’s one more they may not have realized. Could having a pet improve our immune system? So far, all the studies point to that.  People who are around animals may not be prone to conditions such as eczema, asthma and other allergies. The benefit has to do with being exposed to the microbiome of animals. Their germs and microbes apparently stay on our skin and penetrate inside us in a way that helps create an immunity. Pets could now be called a new probiotic. 

It began when researchers became aware that there are certain diseases the Amish are not prone to. Of course, they live still in a pre-industrial society and their air is cleaner than ours, but the main factor is that they live with animals. Studies have now been done by other scientists studying the microbiome of pets and their owners, which showed a similarity that can explain why being around animals, certainly having a pet, can help our immune system and more easily resist certain germs.

 This new advantage to having pets seem to open us to question a downside of living in germ phobic societies