INDUSTRY — The loved ones who gathered in a muddy clearing to say goodbye to their friend and father gazed down at the glowing white cocoon that lay at the bottom of a freshly dug grave.

The peculiar container — a casket made entirely of mushrooms — held the body of Mark Ancker, who died of a heart attack last month at 77. His burial was the first of its kind in the U.S.

“I think my dad would probably get a kick out of the idea of being a pioneer,” said Marsya Ancker-Robert, his daughter, who lives in Bethel. “This is an opportunity for us to really create something, even though his spirit isn’t in his physical body anymore.”

Ancker-Robert had heard about mushroom caskets years earlier and never forgot. Shortly after her father died, she searched for options and found Bob Hendrikx, a Dutch designer whose company is working to transform funerals from something that harms the Earth into something that heals it.

Ancker-Robert purchased a coffin made entirely from mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, that was grown in just seven days. Containers like the one used to bury Mark Ancker have been used in thousands of services across Europe, but the ceremony on Ancker’s property last Sunday in Industry, a Franklin County town of 800 residents with no school or hospital, was the first here.

“We’re facilitating the human decomposition in a very passive way because we’re just enabling nature to do its thing,” said Hendrikx, the co-founder and CEO of Loop Biotech. “Which is the complete opposite of what the industry is doing, because they’re trying to preserve the body.”

Mushroom caskets, designed to encourage rapid decomposition, are just one example of green burial, a movement that forgoes embalming chemicals, concrete vaults and synthetic linings in favor of biodegradable materials. While they represent a small share of total funerals, the National Funeral Directors Association reported that in 2024, 68% of people surveyed said they would be interested in exploring green funeral options, up from 55.7% in 2021. Cemeteries nationwide have seen a 72% surge in demand for green burials, prompting the rise of sustainable funeral homes, including several in Maine.

“As time has gone on and people have become more environmentally conscious, it’s really blossomed exponentially,” said Joyce Smart, president of Cedar Brook Burial Grounds in Limington. “And it’s obviously much less expensive.”

Smart has overseen hundreds of green burials since opening Cedar Brook in 2007, describing the practice as a return to a centuries-old tradition of laying bodies to rest “simply and cleanly.” The cemetery requires that all burial containers are fully biodegradable. People have been laid to rest in woven baskets, pieces of furniture, and wrapped in their favorite quilts. Some request that their body or ashes be placed in a pod beneath a sapling.

But Smart has never come across a mushroom casket. The closest, she recalled, was a few years ago when a man asked to be laid above ground in a suit infused with mushroom spores, designed to feed on his body as it decomposed.

“I said no,” Smart said, explaining that she eventually agreed to bury him 4 feet down.

When Ancker-Robert began making arrangements for her father, she contacted four different funeral directors in Maine, and none had heard of a mushroom casket, though all were familiar with green burial in general.

Mike Regan, a funeral director at Birmingham Funeral Home in Old Town, said that in more than 30 years in the industry, he’s only handled two green burials.

“Every family has a unique need. Everyone’s preferences are a little different,” he said. “And, perhaps they’re just not aware of the green burial options.”

Although a mushroom casket can technically be buried in a traditional cemetery, Regan said most cemeteries require the use of a concrete burial vault to keep the ground level for mowing and landscaping. Concrete is not biodegradable, and its production expends a lot of fuel and energy. In the United States alone, conventional burials consume an estimated 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid, 20 million board feet of hardwood, and 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete each year, according to the Green Burial Council, a nonprofit organization based in Ojai, California.

That kind of waste was a key motivation behind the founding of Loop Biotech, said CEO Hendrikx, who operates the company from his studio in the Netherlands city of Delft.

But the shift toward green burial is also about reimagining the human relationship with death, he said. He wants people to see themselves as part of nature, not separate from it. Literally becoming compost, he said, is a step in that direction.

“Having people think about their mortality and about their value could benefit the cycle of life,” said Hendrikx, 31. “If you’re surrounded by death and you see death, you’re actually very conscious that you could die, which makes you even more grateful for life.”

That philosophy resonated with the Ancker family. The mushroom coffin holding Ancker cost $4,000, which is comparable to a standard casket, according to Regan. Some families spend up to $10,000 on mahogany models that take decades to decompose. Green burials eliminate embalming costs and often require nothing more than a burial plot and digging fees.

Once they ruled out a traditional cemetery, Ancker’s family got permission from the county’s registry of deeds to create a family burial ground on his property. The grave was dug only a few feet deep, shallower than a traditional burial, to ensure enough oxygen for natural decomposition.

Ancker’s 13-year-old neighbor hauled five loads of cow manure and six bales of hay to help fill the hole, along with fruits and vegetables. Ancker-Robert topped it with potting soil and planted flowering perennials brought by friends and family. The earth above her father’s coffin will bloom for as long as the seasons allow, from daffodils in spring to black-eyed Susans in fall.

“If you create a compost pit-like environment, all of his soft tissue should be reincorporated into his garden by winter,” Ancker-Robert said. “This way, he gets to be part of a garden and everybody who loves him does, too.”

Smart said some of her clients at Cedar Brook spend years planning for their eventual burial. That wasn’t true for Ancker, who avoided the topic altogether.

“He was getting older and he could feel himself not being himself,” said Avery Ancker, Ancker’s 24-year-old son who lives on the property. “He was frightened, and he didn’t want to talk about it that much.”

Still, Ancker-Robert remembers her father wanting to be buried as simply as possible. And this, she said, was as close as he could get.

“When I was younger, my dad always told me he wanted to be buried naked in the woods under a tree,” she said, standing over his grave. “Here he is in his little cocoon, in the woods, naked, with his favorite things next to him.”

Though he wore no clothes, Ancker’s body was surrounded by the objects that mattered most to him. His favorite T-shirt – Jesus riding a dinosaur – was draped over his eyes. In his hands rested a copy of “Illusions” by Richard Bach, a story of an unlikely friendship between a pilot and a self-proclaimed messiah. Radishes, unwrapped peppermint patties and mandarin oranges bounced off the coffin’s soft exterior as friends tossed Ancker’s favorite foods into the grave.

He faced his home, a towering wooden estate at the heart of the 24-acre property Ancker called “Simple Pleasures.” It’s where he married his second wife, soaked in an outdoor hot tub with friends, and brought Avery home from the hospital after he was born in Farmington.

“This is exactly what he would want,” Avery said. “Being a part of this property that he loved so much and put so much effort into would make him very happy.”

Avery moved back to Simple Pleasures four years ago, when his father needed help maintaining the land. The two spent the years that followed clearing brush, building fires and seeing plays at the Lakewood Theater in Madison. They talked about Avery’s future, about Ancker’s past. Among the lessons passed down was how to rake properly – always lift the leaves, never drag.

He knows his father would be happy about where he ended up, still serving the land, working even in death.