10093227Female lead start-up revolutionising the burial industry with reef restorationClosedInvestment AcceleratorInnovate UKLouise Skajem, co-founder of Resting Reef, is pursuing to create a positive impact on people and the planet, and this opportunity will give her a platform to encourage other young women to explore areas they feel are out of their ability and take on big complex projects. Resting Reef (RR) is a memorial service that regenerates life in people's afterlives and radically changes how we see and experience one of the most traumatic events in our lifetime - death. RR do this by building artificial reef structures with a formula containing human ashes and crushed oyster shells, two elements that nourish and promote marine growth, as an eco-friendly alternative to traditional burial methods. Traditional burials require large amounts of land, chemical embalming fluids that seep into the groundwater, and materials with intense emissions like steel and concrete. Each cremation releases 400 kgs of CO2 into the atmosphere for each funeral. RR promotes marine growth with the regeneration of approximately 100 oysters per reef which equals a positive impact of 7m litres of water filtered every year (Beck et al., 2011). By promoting the growth of oysters, seagrass will grow in the area, and fish will flourish. It also prevents billions of pounds of erosion damage to coastal communities (Stokes et al., 2012). Individual memorial reef structures can be placed together to create entire reefs to boost natural oyster reefs, which have decreased by 85% due to human activities, making them one of the world's most threatened bio-diverse habitats. To date, RR has placed formula samples for 12 months in the London Aquarium and 6 months in real marine environments in Norway. Both tests show promising results. RR has conducted a customer discovery with a consultancy including 250 participants understanding there is a market demand for alternative sustainable ways to deal with ashes. This project is focusing on R&D that will allow an innovative and sustainable burial option to become ready for market.