Ethical Jewellery Part Two - Ethical Gemstones
Ethical Diamonds (we’ll get on to Ethical jewellery and gemstones later):
The blockbuster movie Blood Diamond highlighted the fact that some diamonds distributed by otherwise respectable companies had actually been mined in war zones in Africa, such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory Coast and Angola, funding militia and wars.
In 2003 the UN-sponsored Kimberley Process created a tracking process for diamond roughs to curb the trade in conflict diamonds and to crete transparenct in th ethical jewellery market.
If you’re buying small amounts of diamonds, it is almost impossible to determine exactly which mine your diamonds originated in, because most Mining Companies (eg. De Beers) will aggregate their stones from many mining areas/countries before they distribute them to cutters and dealers worldwide. However buying from a reputable dealer, with a solid and regular supply-chain should give you the confidence that these diamonds have been charted through the Kimberly Process, and are conflict free.
For more provenance, Canadian Diamonds and Australian Diamonds will fit the bill. The Canada Mark assures that a stone is conflict free and will come with a certificate of origin.
Aerial view of a diamond mine in Canada. Image courtesy of thejewelleryeditor.com
Most diamond mining takes place in large scale mines in Africa, Russia, Australia and Canada.
There is no denying that large scale diamond mining is very destructive towards the environment in regards to deforestation. Large scale mining also involves using huge bulldozers and excavators to extract the diamonds. In addition, they might use chemicals and explosives in the extraction process.
On the plus side, these large, often multi-national, companies are bound by (and frequently have to publicly disclose performance against) various international health, safety and environmental standards (such as the UN Guidelines and the OECD Due Diligence), and each mine employs tens of thousands of people.
Ethical Coloured Gemstones for jewellery:
Most ethically sourced gemstones (80% of coloured gemstones) are mined in small or artisanal mining operations. Profits in these instances are more likely to go straight back to the local families and communities, with a lot of the funds being channelled into education and schools as well as hospitals in the area.
These mining operations have minimal environmental impact, for example, using local trees to build scaffolding to climb into the mine (usually less than 10 metres deep), which then gets back-filled once mining in that spot is completed. There is far less use of chemicals in the mining of coloured gemstones too.
There is nothing like the Kimberley Process in place to certify coloured gemstones as they progress from mine to market, But, simply put, the shorter the supply chain from mine to jeweller, the less chance of funds being misdirected. This meains that in the main coloured gems are far more likely to be ethical gemstones.
Many of my Ethical gemstones have a full provenance all the way from the mine to me. I feel this makes a wonderful story of each gemstone’s journey from discovery to design.
The shorter and more transparent the supply chain, the easier it is to source gems for ethical jewellery from mines that:
pay a reasonable wage for the miners
establish and maintain a minimum hiring age
prioritise environmental rehabilitation and reclamation
and adhere to strict health and safety standards
fair working hours
I work with ethical gem suppliers here in the UK and overseas, to make sure my gems bring joy, not jeopardy.
Lab Created gemstones:
Whist simulated stones offer many benefits over the physical impact of mining, it isn’t a clear cut option. Firstly, the miners who eke out a living by small-scale mining would ultimately suffer. As would their families and communities.
Also, in some instances, the production of simulated diamonds and gemstones uses more energy than a mining operation would use to extract the same quantity of material.
