Forget caskets, concrete footings in the ground and marble tombstones. David Neustein and Kevin Hartley have plans to upend the traditional business model of death with natural burials – low-impact interment in land that will in time be regrown with vegetation and remain a living memorial.

Neustein, of design firm Other Architects, and Hartley, the project director of not-for-profit Earth Funerals, came to the notion separately, but are now co-operating on finding sites that could see Hartley offer the burial service as soon as next year for the cost of a cremation – about $7000.