Undertaker Isabelle Plumereau cycled around Paris on a recent autumn day with a bicycle hearse, which she hopes will soon bring to the French capital a new way of organising funerals.
Green burials are a small but growing trend, and Ms Plumereau argued that transporting the coffin with a specially designed cargo bike can bring a softer pace to a funeral.
While it already exists in a few other countries, including Switzerland and Denmark, this would be a first in France, said the 51-year-old undertaker.
"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 said.
"Everyone walks at the same pace and we hear each other, we hear the sounds of nature around us, the wind in the trees, the birds."
Ms Plumereau said she already had official authorisations to use the bicycle hearse - after adapting it to French regulations - and was just waiting for the green light from her insurer to get started.
People passing by looked at the black and lightwood bicycle hearse, some of them intrigued, not all convinced.
"It's quite innovative," 49-year-old Elyes Meziou said, before adding that he wouldn't want it for his own funeral.
