Pioneering technological advances lead the way

Building a coffin may seem like a simple thing to do, but for our team at Lifelia, production and creation of coffins using environmentally non-harmful board has been led by technological innovations.

We discovered 85% of coffins used for cremations in the UK were made from lacquered MDF or some sort of particle board, the likes of which can release harmful and toxic gases when burnt, and knew change was needed. We felt that surely, the days of creating and selling coffins that are constructed using damaging glues and resins and feature single use plastic handles are numbered.

Founder of Lifelia, Rob Farfort says “Why add extra, harmful pollution in the air when it could be avoided? We just had to work out how we could make this happen?”

Our journey started with the creation of a coffin using a completely new material to the industry, called Pro-Origin Board that looks and feels like wood but is made from wood fibres from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) approved sustainable sources.

Research and development of this innovation has taken time, but the end result was use of a material that was biodegradable, recyclable, lightweight, and importantly was manufactured without the use of the toxic glues, resins, and lacquers used in other coffins. It also didn’t bend or crack, and created a watertight coffin, that could even handle large weights, meaning it was perfect for people of all sizes.

Increasingly bereaved families are asking for coffins to be customised with images and text personal or meaningful to the deceased. This could be the logo of their favourite football team, an image of their loved ones and pets, or even words of a song that they particularly liked.

Many coffin manufacturers painted or printed these on the coffin using traditional inks, without consideration of the fact that these were also harmful to the environment. For the team at Lifelia this wasn’t acceptable, so we identified a range of environmentally friendly inks that worked perfectly on the coffins and meant any design requests could be accommodated in a sustainable and safe way.

But the innovations didn’t stop there. We recognised that most funeral directors often wanted coffins in different dimensions but didn’t have the space to store multiple sizes, so at Lifelia we developed a unique production process that allowed for every coffin to be custom made to measure to exactly the size required.

The process, called Parametric Sizing, means a coffin of perfect dimensions could be created quickly and easily, and even be delivered to the funeral director just one day after they placed the order (or even on the same day if urgently needed).

We feel this could help some funeral directors, as there would no longer be the need to store coffins in multiple sizes or even store any coffins at all, and they could offer perfect sized coffins (which could be fully customised) to bereaved families regardless of the size and dimensions required.

Living to our ethics, we are a Carbon Neutral company (scope 1 & 2) and are working towards scope 3 and other broader environmental certifications.  We know that realistically, some processes will have environmental impact, so Lifelia is focused on offsetting our carbon footprint at every stage of production -investing in our environment and it’s welfare.

Founder of Lifelia, Rob Farfort continued “Innovation and technological advancements remain at the heart of Lifelia as we strive to disrupt the end-of-life sector. We hope to drive change, so that Funeral Directors and families are able to select coffins that are affordable, are environmentally safe and non-harmful to human health, and easily personalised to customer needs. We are at the very beginning of our journey…”