'Green Reaper' Mortician Elizabeth Fourner's Recipe for DIY Urn From Dryer Lint

(April 22) -- Cremation may be one of the cheapest funeral options around, but the folks at the funeral home make a killing on the urns.

Some can cost close to $1,000 or more.

If you're not dying to pay that, Oregon-based mortician Elizabeth Fournier is dying to tell you her little secret: You can make a very personal urn for you or your loved one for pennies just by using leftover laundry lint.

"The stuff that ends up in the dryer's lint trap is good fabric and sometimes there's hair, which is a good binder as well," she said.

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Mortician Offers Green Urns
DIY Dryer Lint Urns

Fournier is known as the "Green Reaper," and, as such, she is as focused on helping folks save green money as well as being green in their personal lives.

To that end, she offers this recipe on making your urn out of laundry lint in order to keep the ashes of your loved one in a safe, eco-friendly package.

Ingredients

3 cups of dryer lint (especially pieces with pet or human hair)

2 cups of water

2/3 cup of flour (works as a glue when mixed with the water.)

Preparation

1. Mix water and lint together in a large saucepan, stirring well.

2. Slowly add flour, mixing well.

3. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture holds together, forming peaks.

4. Pour out onto several layers of newspaper to cool. Use mixture over a base, such as a box, balloon or bottle, spreading like papier-mache.

Elizabeth Fournier and a laundry-lint urn

Courtesy of Elizabeth Fournier

Funeral home director Elizabeth Fournier is shown here working on an urn made of laundry lint. Fournier believes laundry lint urns are a great way to save money and the environment.

5. Dry four to five days. As it dries, it hardens over whatever mold you form it on. Fournier used a rubber ball with the characters of "Sesame Street" depicted on it for the first models.

6. Carefully cut open the dried urn so that you can remove the object it's been molded onto.

7. Glue together the dried pieces with non-toxic glue or sew them together with biodegradable thread or you can adhere them to eco-friendly paper and, once dried, the hardened forms can be folded into shape.

8. Fournier says the final product can be painted, decoupaged or decorated "just about any way you want."

Although these urns can hold up to 15 pounds of human "cremains," Fournier says that, if buried, they will likely decompose within three weeks.