New Zealand funeral directors have increased the size of their standard coffins because of the population’s expanding waistlines.
According to the country’s health minister, one in four New Zealanders is obese so now the average coffin size is 23in at the shoulder, up from 19in, while double burial plots are being sold.
Noelene Mudgway, the manager of Auckland’s Manukau Memorial Gardens, said: “Our cremators aren’t wide enough to take people who are seriously obese.”
To address the issue of larger coffins, the cemetery had offered families two adjoining plots.
