They take six months to two years to biodegrade.

Marketing director Joanna Passarelli says the company sold $40,000 worth of banana-sheaf or bamboo coffins to funeral homes last year.

At least 14 funeral homes around the country offer them.

"We either get an, 'Oh, my,' or, 'That's very interesting,' " Passarelli said. "Some people think it's a great idea. We've had funeral directors look at them and say, 'I guess you can go to hell in a handbasket now.' "

In natural burials, bodies aren't embalmed and eventually decompose into the earth.

Ecoffins USA is the sister company of the SAWD Partnership, which has helped fuel the green-funeral movement in the United Kingdom.

Sax-Tiedemann Funeral Home & Crematorium in Franklin, Ill., has sold one banana Ecoffin since it started offering Ecoffins in the last several months.

Stephen Dawson, owner and president of Sax-Tiedemann, said it was not that far removed from the woven baskets that funeral homes used in the 1950s and '60s to pick up bodies from hospitals and nursing homes.

Passarelli contends that the bamboo and banana coffins, made in Asia, are better for the environment than the cremation process.

Her interest in eco-friendly coffins grew after her son's school showed the movie An Inconvenient Truth in which former Vice President Al Gore warns of climate change. Her son came home wondering why he should bother with homework if the world would be destroyed.

"I said, 'If everybody did one little thing, it would have a snowball effect.' "