Ultimate Box

Cardboard caskets cut costs

The Egyptians built massive pyramids to be the ceremonial resting places of the pharaohs, and countries around the world have long given the dead elaborate burials. Now a Swedish pathologist has designed a new casket that he claims is suited to the less ceremonial 1980s. It is made of wax-impregnated corrugated cardboard and is said to be just as durable as an ordinary pine box. With its outer finish of imitation oak or walnut, it even resembles a wooden casket. Promoters point out that the cardboard model can be shipped flat to reduce transportation costs, conserves scarce natural resources, costs only one-tenth as much as a traditional casket and will start to decompose in about three years.

The ultimate box is the product of Dr. Sven-Olof Lidholm, who had the idea for it 15 years ago while identifying victims of an airplane accident in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands. It weighs 60 Ibs., about half as much as a wooden casket, but supports a weight of 800 lbs. Lidholm says that the cardboard one would be particularly useful after natural disasters. In southern Italy, many survivors of last month's earthquake were forced to bury relatives in coffins bought on the black market at high prices.

Lidholm began producing the caskets this year for the Swedish market, where he has sold about 1,000 of them. This fall a Fort Lauderdale cemetery operator, Cem-A-Care of Florida, started importing them into the U.S. They will sell for $125, as compared with about $1,250 for a conventional wood or metal casket. Cem-A-Care hopes to market 7,500 of the cardboard models next year. Florida funeral directors, however, are opposed to the cardboard caskets because they could cause a drop in their profits on a burial.

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