Eco friendly, Fair trade Certifed Jewelry by GreenKarat
An organization named Green Karat certifies gold as green or eco friendly. The make sure that gold was mined not under war, thru fair labor, and do as less harm to the environment as possible.
They do this by retraining miners into non-mining livelihoods, advocating for the recycling of precious metals. Most of it is sitting in bank vaults anyways! Gold mining is faulted with deforestation, soil erosion into streams. The industry uses chemicals, especially mercury to separate gold from rock. Its harms both its workers and the surrounding ecosystem as well.
They also oppose diamond mining because of the unconscionable human and ecological sacrifice as seen in the hit film “Blood Diamond” which stars Leonardo DiCaprio. As that movie showed the Diamond industry has financed the activities of various rebel groups who have practically enslaved, tortured, killed, and maimed miner workers, and their communities.
A lot of the diamonds in Africa are excavated from river beds. This involves blowing up the river bed and bringing up rock that is buried deep under the river bed. You can imagine what this does to the environment. After tons of riverbed is removed it is usually handpicked from the sand and gravel by women and children. These workers have to work a many hours in the hot sun for meager pay…
Although there is more certifications of eco friendly, fair trade diamonds today many producers are able to cheat. Green Karat advocates the production of synthetic diamonds. Through modern technology high temperature, high pressure, and chemical vapor deposition can create diamonds that although not naturally created are optically and physically the same as their natural cousins. Only very sophisticated equipment can tell the difference!
Its time to make the switch to man made diamonds and support eco friendly, fair trade gold. It matters where materials are sourced, even jewelry.
See what other recyle, reuse programs Green Karat has to offer…
September 14th, 2007 at 12:05 am |
Unfortunately processing gold and turning it into jewelery is not all that eco friendly. I used to be a jeweller - casting gold (melting and casting it into say the shape of a ring), polishing, soldering and setting stones as well as using a diamond to cut designs in the gold and there’s a lot of chemicals, gases and energy used in the process that are not eco friendly.
For example, after casting gold rings it’s not uncommon for the freshly cast rings to be blasted with a mix of industrial hydrogen peroxide and cyanide. Those chemicals going right down the sink into public water systems.
Most trade jewelers have small offices in the city, often in buildings filled with other jewelery trades people. There aren’t special water filtering systems or air filtering systems to removed these chemicals and gases from the air or keep them out of the water.
Until practices change within the jewelry trade it’s not really possible to call jewelry eco friendly. My opinion anyway as someone who worked in the trade for 7 years before changing careers.
September 16th, 2007 at 7:48 pm |
wow very interesting Tricia. So GreenKarat looks after the mining industry and does not really go after the casting, and polishing, and the jewelry stores. The least we could do is buy synthetic jewelry that looks like the real thing. GreenKarat is trying to do with Diamonds… At the very least gold is not purchased a lot…
YOu are right about those cleaning chemicals though. Eco friendly cleaners are not tough enough yet. I think I am going back to Tide for my clothes washing! Eco cleaners suck unless you want them for light duties…
Thanks for the comments. Saw you on the pay per post forums. What other forums do you hang out if your still reading…
September 21st, 2007 at 3:00 pm |
Hey! Thanks for visiting my blog! I’m impressed with your service on the USS JFK. What type of work did you do?
October 8th, 2007 at 7:53 pm |
I wish I had seen this blog sooner. I’ve been buying silver earrings from overstock.
I took a jewelry class once and we only used vinegar and salt and other eco friendly things to clean and polish our metals. I think it’s possible.
September 20th, 2008 at 3:32 am |
it is a nice cause of point.
that you can donate old jewelry to make a new one. i think habdmade jewelry is more eco friendly.
September 20th, 2008 at 3:33 am |
I think handmade Jewelry is more Eco friendly.