If you prefer your home de-coffinated, please ignore…
I LOVE running across wacky examples of reduce, reuse, recycle in action. Take this slightly morbid example…a sarcophagus moonlighting as a sofa?? Read on.
The company Coffin Couches, prides itself on having a “green” mindset because it repurposes used caskets into striking living room pieces. I’ll be the first to point out that for a company to truly be “green” it requires a lot more than a morbid form of recycling, but you’ve got to admire the ambition.
According to the company’s site, it specializes in giving new life (ha! couldn’t resist) to 18-gauge steel coffins collected from Southern Californian funeral homes. Apparently, these coffins were used for cadaver display but rejected before burial because of cosmetic inconsistencies. And, at least in California, once a body has been placed in a coffin, it’s considered a biohazard, so each leg of these heavy-duty couches is emblazoned with a universal biohazard insignia.
The language used to introduce the coffin couches on the company’s web site is decidedly vague, only adding to the creepiness of both the site and idea. A creepiness that only deepened when I learned (via a post on an Inventors blog) that the company’s owner, Vidal Herrera, runs an assortment of other death-related companies, including a one-stop autopsy shop he hopes to turn into a national chain.
If this wasn’t confirmed in several other places on the Web, including the 1-800 Autopsy, the actual site of Herrera’s post-mortem empire, I wouldn’t have believed it. Although it gives me the shivers, it looks like green really does come in many shades…even black.