In the Netherlands, an 82-year old woman was recently laid to rest in a coffin made entirely of fast-composting mushroom fibres that will considerably increase the health of the soil in the years that follow.

Bob Hendrikx, Loop

Dubbed the ‘Living Cocoon,’ the coffin gives an option for a more ecologically conscious generation who may want to leave a positive impact on the planet after they’ve gone.

Created by 26-year-old Bob Hendrikx, a bio-designer from the University of Delft, the Living Cocoon is made by growing mycelium around a coffin-shaped frame. Mycelium is the part of the mushroom we can’t see—the underground fibrous network that makes up most of the lifeform.

Hendrikx also referred to it as “nature’s recycler,” as mycelium has been shown by mushroom scientists, called mycologists, to be able to process things which other agents of decomposition can’t tackle.

“Mycelium is constantly looking for waste products–oil, plastic, metals, other pollutants–and converting them into nutrients for the environment,” Hendrikx said, according to the Guardian. “This coffin means we actually feed the earth with our bodies. We are nutrients, not waste.”

RELATED: Eating Mushrooms a Few Times a Week Could Dramatically Reduce Dementia Risk, Says 6-Year Study

In contrast to the years it can take a conventional coffin—with artificial cloth fibers, laminated wood, and metal components—to break down, local newspapers covering the funeral claimed the Living Cocoon “takes one week to grow and then, containing the body of the deceased, takes an estimated two to three years to decompose.”

Why do insults once hurled at us stick inside our skull, sometimes for decades? Why do political smear campaigns outpull positive ones?

The answer is, nastiness makes a bigger impact on your brain.

And that, says Ohio State University psychologist John T. Cacioppo, Ph.D., is due to the brain's "negativity bias": your brain is simply built with a greater sensitivity to unpleasant news. The bias is so automatic that it can be detected at the earliest stage of the brain's information processing.

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Other researcher have found the same thing. It is the frequency of small positive acts that matters most, in a ratio of about 5 to 1.

Interestingly, occasional large positive experiences—say, a big birthday bash—are nice, but they don't make the necessary impact on our brain to override the tilt to negativity. It takes frequent small positive experiences to tip the scales toward happiness.