Bicycle hearse makes funeral journey gentle and green

Giving a gentle pace to the last journey of a person while ensuring reduction in carbon footprints, a Paris-based undertaker has come up with a bicycle hearse in France.

Isabelle Plumereau, Director of a funeral home, was seen going around the French capital recently pedalling the bicycle hearse. She hopes that this new way of transporting the body for funeral will herald a new “green” way of conducting the last rites.

There is a growing trend among people to choose quieter and environmentally conscious burials, as per Plumereau. The hearse, a specially-designed cargo bike, she said confers a more down to earth pace to a funeral.

Talking to Reuters she said: “For me, it makes sense to combine the bicycle and the hearse because, when we talk about bicycles in Paris, we are talking about soft mobility and if there is one day when we need softness it’s the day when we accompany someone we love to their final resting place.”

She went on to add: “Everyone walks at the same pace (behind a bicycle hearse) and we hear each other, we hear the sounds of nature around us, the wind in the trees, the birds. In my view this is the best way to console yourself.”

The bicycle hearse has already received official authorisation.

Even though her bicycle hearse is the first in France, some countries including Switzerland and Denmark are already using them.