Woolen Coffins Offer a Green Alternative for Burials - TIME

Jack Welch famously said, "There is no such thing as a mature industry; there is only an industry to which imagination had yet to be applied". The following story published in Time Magazine online does more than justify this adage.

Woolen Coffins Offer a Green Alternative for Burials - TIME: "Thanks to a growing demand for green funerals in Britain, Hainsworth's Natural Legacy caskets — each woven from the fleece of three sheep and capable of holding 840 lb. (380 kg) — have begun to carve out a share of the U.K.'s coffin market, which typically numbers around 500,000 a year."

Green burials? I thought a wooden casket was very biodegradable. Yet the idea of a WOOLEN (as opposed to WOODEN) casket has a certain novelty factor. Add the "green" label and viola, you have renaissance in the wool industry! What about the dead? The dead could care less if they are buried in wooden or woolen - its the living who benefit from the innovation.

But it often takes an outsider to come up with innovative ideas. This one came from a marketing intern!
The idea for woolen coffins came about thanks to a bit of sheer luck. A marketing student who was interning for Adam Hainsworth discovered that in 1667, Parliament — hoping to bolster the textile industry — passed a law requiring all corpses be buried in a woolen shroud.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2056346,00.html#ixzz1Iesvi9qC

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