Dirty Gold
Industrial gold mining is a dirty business, there's no denying it. We are signatories to the 'no dirty gold campaign' and are working to prove to the big suppliers that there is a market for ethically mined gold.
We have now found pre-certified fair trade 18ct gold and have made several rings out of it.
This is the big one, and in no way easy to solve. Large-scale gold mining can be extremely environmentally invasive, and it's very difficult to know where your gold has come from through the regular supply chain. Because we are a bespoke jeweller and don't know what you are going to want your ring to be made out of until you have your appointment, we face some special challenges that jewellers who are designing collections for manufacture can get around.
As an industry, with the Responsible Jewellery Council we have been proving to the large mining companies that extracting gold in a cleaner, more responsible way is important to customers, and the gold mining industry has started to clean up its act. It's not there yet, but there is progress and momentum is building.
We have just been able to buy our first gold mined under Fair Trade principles, which comes from a gravity mining project in South America that uses no noxious chemicals to seperate gold from the rock. Unfortunately at the moment supplies are limited and only certain sizes and shapes are available, but we’ve now made a few rings using fair trade gold and recycled diamonds, and we hape to be using a lot more in the future.
Related blog articles
- Harriet's blog article on dirty gold.
- Alice's blog article on dirty gold.