Controversial dig-swap grave scheme promises reduced future funeral costs

With planning ahead becoming one of the latest on-trend activities, securing yourself a future hole in the ground by digging one today makes more sense than ever. But how? Say hello to new grave-based scheme Dig Swap.

A recent surge in the popularity of dying has seen death achieve all-time highs. Consequently, the nation’s funerary services are in rude health. Growth and innovation are ripe across the burials and cremation sector. And introduction three years ago of the National Undertaker League (NUL) is widely credited with spawning quality-boosting improvements. Into this mushrooming growth area comes Dig Swap.

Dig Swap is brainchild of NUL's league toppers Shovel and Sons. Over twelve months last year the Shovel and Sons family firm put away a mindboggling deceased number exceeding one hundred thousand. There’s more. Consumer users rate Shovel and Sons’ life-to-resting-place relocation services highest of all, awarding the frontrunning undertakers 4.6 stars across the board.

'I’d never heard of it before, but then I did. And in less than an instant, Dig Swap made perfect sense for someone like me’ – early Dig Swap user

Dig Swap works by saving amateur grave diggers money on future burial or oven work. The scheme leverages a human quality that director Jock Shovel says stretches back millennia. ‘Every person alive possesses an irrepressibly strong instinct to dig’. He should know. Jock Shovel is a product of generations of undertakers. And despite many of his ancestors eventually perishing, he and his family’s desire for innovation in undertaking lives on regardless.

Dig Swap, currently in a soft-launch phase, is open to all. Meaning whoever you are, that all almost certainly includes you. ‘Assuming a client plans on dying at some point, they’re eligible for our new Dig Swap scheme,’ says Shovel. ‘How it works is, before you die – earlier is better – you come along and dig a grave or two. Not yours, someone else’s. Doesn’t matter whose, just someone who’s just died or is about to. There’s plenty to chose from, don’t worry.’

‘For every grave dug, diggers earn a Dig and Die credit. The more graves dug, the more Dig and Dies diggers amass. Dig and Dies are minted via our audited policy and stored securely on the blockchain. Treat them however you like – speculate, trade, hold or swap, gift and bequeath, the choice is yours. Already a secondary market is flourishing. What matters is these credits will pay for your grave when it's needed.'

Early dig-swap signup digs multiple graves, earning Dig and Die credits. He hopes despite his own advancing years these fresh graves won’t be for him.

Jock Shovel – who trained as a successful TV chef before his family lured him back to its larger ovens – says savings saved by no longer paying massive sums demanded by so-called professional grave diggers can be spent on further improving services. Faster, lighter hearses, constructed from the latest composite materials. Speedier, hotter cremations, all freeing up time for mourners on busier than ever schedules. Dying needn’t be the slow laborious and expensive process we’ve become accustomed to, he says. Slick, quick and cheaper than ever. The future is here, he says, already.

Beyond that, Shovel is commissioning viability studies into robotised tombstone chisellers and headstone inscribers, alongside trialing a subscription-based, drone-delivered, graveside floristry service. Anything, he says, for an ever-silkier end-user experience. Alive or dead, you’ll benefit from the thinking behind Shovel’s thoughts.

In an industry so often described as conveyor-beltist, critics and non-critics alike are raving. They say Shovel and Son’s innovations are changing the game. According to Prince Yong of magazine Good Die, ‘Dig Swap is a welcome breath of fresh air in what has for too long felt like an unopened wooden box of stale air.’

Interested in signing up? If you’re lucky enough to live in Shovel and Son’s expanding catchment area, you can. The only catch? You have to sign up before you die.