In an era when environmental sustainability has been embraced as an issue of paramount concern, a growing number of Japanese have found a way to do their bit for the planet even after death.

Many are opting for a new type of lightweight cardboard coffin that uses less lumber and releases fewer hazardous gases during cremation than plywood caskets.

A 63-year-old homemaker who lost her husband to cancer in mid-April was surprised to learn his moss green coffin was made of cardboard after it was carried into her house in Chiba Prefecture.

"(But) I'm sure my husband would have been happy with the coffin because it's environmentally friendly," she said.

Several guests at the funeral service said they would choose the cardboard coffin for their own services.

Its eco-friendly credentials have made a crucial difference in an environmentally conscious country where emissions from crematoriums have become an issue of debate.

Whereas conventional caskets are made from paulownia or plywood created from imported lumber, cardboard coffins are produced from triple-wall reinforced cardboard and can support a weight of up to 250 kilograms. The same material is used to make import cargo containers.

Because cardboard models are upholstered on the surface, they appear outwardly to be much the same as conventional coffins.

According to Tokyo-based Tri-Wall KK, one of several manufacturers of cardboard coffins, the amount of lumber used is two-thirds of that in a plywood model.

The company's coffins are made without glues, fasteners or other metal objects, so they emit just one-third the amount of hazardous substances--such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide--during cremation.

Tri-Wall began manufacturing the coffins in autumn 2006 to fill the largely untapped demand for eco-friendly funeral services.

It sold about 2,000 units in 2008--up from 1,000 units by the end of 2007--thanks partly to a new option that lets customers donate part of the proceeds from sales to tree-planting programs overseas.

About 300 funeral companies across the nation now handle Tri-Wall's cardboard caskets.

Koekisha Co., a leading Osaka-based funeral company that administers about 9,000 funerals in the Tokyo metropolitan area and the Kansai region annually, added the cardboard coffin to its catalog two years ago.

The company sells the casket for about 200,000 yen, almost the same price as the plywood version.

Bereaved families have readily embraced the unconventional option, although some have voiced concerns about its durability.

The cardboard version now accounts for nearly 30 percent of all the caskets used in funeral services the company conducts in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Seikatsu Club Sougou Service Ltd., which undertakes last rites for five cooperatives in the Tokyo metropolitan area that have a total membership of about 220,000, says that roughly 80 percent of caskets used in its funerals last year were cardboard.

"We recommend the eco-friendly cardboard product as a way to distinguish our service from other funeral companies," an official with Seikatsu Club Sougou Service said.

All Japan Funeral Directors Co-operation, an industry group which has about 1,500 member funeral companies across the nation, projects that demands for cardboard caskets will continue to grow.

"The way funeral rites are performed has changed in the past few years to reflect the shift in public thinking," said an official with the industry organization. "Eco-friendly caskets are one example. If the cost and practicality are reasonable, cardboard coffins will become more popular due to mounting interest in eco-friendly products."

Hajime Himonya, editor of the bimonthly funeral magazine Sogi, says that the decline of the local community has paved the way for a diversification in funeral rites, which are now arranged on a family-by-family basis.

"Undertakers have begun suggesting different types of funeral ceremonies by attaching added values," he said. "Eco-friendly coffins represent part of that trend."

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