Question: How do you navigate ethics in the jewelry industry when it seems like there are no good choices?

Answer: Make new choices when you get new information.

Ten years ago, in 2011, I started my own jewelry business. At the time, figuring out which which sapphires and diamonds were ethical, sustainable, or conflict-free was a labyrinth of information and not all of it good.

Can a gemstone be sustainable? What, if anything, did conflict-free even mean? I was asking myself these questions, I was asking the internet, friends, colleagues, gem sellers, and more. The answers were unsatisfying, or incomplete, or terrible.

At the time, it was easier to just not use any gemstones and focus only on metals. After all, I could at least ensure that my metals were recycled, and at the time, that was enough for me.

Ten years is a long time though – enough time to learn new ideas, to learn about new sources, and to change my mind about those choices.

Where did I start to source gemstones?

Back in 2013 or so, lab-grown seemed like the best answer to a lot of my problems with gemstones and diamonds. When I wanted to make more bridal jewelry and incorporate more gems, the options were few – I could find a handful of traceable gem dealers with some options (none of those options were diamonds), or go full-throttle into lab-grown stones like Moissanite, lab-grown/synthetic diamonds and lab grown Sapphires.

It was good, right? They aren’t mined! Some are grown using solar power! We can tell you what country they come from! It is goooood! No problems!

What are the other issues with lab-grown gemstones?

Those other issues? Lack of transparency, ecological concerns*, possible labor issues.

In the process of sourcing lab-grown stones, information about their country of origin and the process by which they are grown can still be hard to find out.

Buying lab-grown gems did not come with any guarantees of fair wages paid for labor at any stage including cutting, nor were there environmental or ecological guarantees.

Sure, a company here or there would promote that they were powering their operations using solar panels, but those companies were few and far between, and many of those companies were still shipping their rough diamonds and sapphires to other countries for cutting and polishing. Which countries? *shrug* 

My questions and conversations with lab-grown gemstone companies went like this:

Me, to the lab-gem seller: OK, cool, so what country do these come from? Where are the labs? Can I label them Made in the USA? Or made elsewhere?

Them: Well, they might come from China, or Russia, or maybe somewhere else? But it’s cool, right? We’re cool? You can say that they are made in the USA, sort of, does that help? Cuz they might be grown here so that’s enough, right?

Me: uuuuhhh, no, I want traceability and this isn’t telling me enough. Why can’t you provide info on where they are cut and whether or not the people who labor to grow and cut them were paid fairly and treated well?

Them:

Me:

*Deep Sighs*

How transparent are these lab-grown diamond companies?

Does this mean that they are NOT practicing fair wages, labor standards, and good environmental practices? Not necessarily, but without full transparency, we can’t know this.

How sustainable are lab-grown diamonds?

Lab grown diamonds will never truly be free of mining as most lab-grown diamonds need materials like methane, graphite and hydrogen to create the diamonds in the first place. They also need lots of power.

Sustainability claims about these synthetic diamonds can be done on a case-by-case basis. For instance, if a small, well-managed mine can control it’s water usage and tailings, but a larger diamond factory is run without the use of renewable energy, which one of these operations would be more sustainable? In other words, making the claim of sustainability depends entirely on where specifically your lab-grown diamond was manufactured.

Are lab-grown diamonds conflict-free?

Starting in 2022, Russia is now at war with a sovereign country and Russia is currently being sanctioned by the United States. Russian lab-grown diamonds can’t be labeled conflict-free, but given that the supply chain is unclear, it will be hard to know whether or not your lab grown diamonds are coming from Russia or not. Ergo you might not be able to claim that your synthetic diamond is actually conflict-free.

Even before the invasion of Ukraine, I was over it and ready to be done with lab-grown stones and I discontinued the collection. In 2019 I bought my last lab-grown stone for my jewelry and moved on to my next sources.

What did I choose instead of lab-grown?

Over the past few years, I slowly phased out lab-grown gems in my work and eventually landed on a few opportunities to do better with my gemstone selections. These alternatives aren’t perfect on their own, but they represent a better path and in some cases, they represent an opportunity to do good and a way to pull the jewelry industry towards a more fair future.

Recycled – I moved on to recycled and post-consumer diamonds and even some sapphires. It is still an imperfect system, but at least it uses up material that is above ground. That said, I can’t verify how they were mined or cut before I got them.

I often liken buying recycled diamonds and sapphires to buying used fur. Buying new fur is ethically dubious, but buying used fur? The damage has been done, and the materials should still be used and not wasted.

The other issue with buying recycled is that mining communities don’t get to share in the economic benefit.

So I opt to use recycled diamonds for small projects and for larger ones, I now turn to the following:

Mine-to-Market and traceable options for gemstones

This isn’t yet a fully recognized term in the industry, but it can be likened to phrases like “Farm-to-Table”.

To put it more clearly, this means that we know where a gemstone is mined, where it goes to be cut, and how it gets to us the jewelers. It is a process that goes beyond what the Kimberley Process does. It has the benefit of being more decentralized and more direct which allows us as jewelers to _better_ track these gemstones.

Is it perfect? No, but it is getting there, and I’d like to contribute to creating positive change in the industry.

One example of this is the Australian sapphires that I purchase from Capricorn Gems – they are mined in a specific area of Queensland Australia, the owner of Capricorn lives within 50 miles of the sources, pays fairly for wages and materials, and send them to a master gem cutter/polisher in Thailand and then they go back to Australia for distribution.

The chain of custody is short and mostly verifiable.

Another great example of traceable stones is Moyo Gems (note: I don’t currently have anything on offer from Moyo gems, but I will in the future). They work directly with TAWOMA – a women’s mining collective in Tanzania.

This kind of gemstone mining and acquiring creates a better financial impact for the communities closest to the mining, keeps the power and management up to the miners, and produces a gemstone that is traceable. The buyers go to the miners to choose and sort stones, the miners set the prices, then they are handed over to the gem cutters and then distributed.

A perfect system? No. TAWOMA is still subject to the governance of their country and women in these communities are still fighting to be heard and are fighting to organize a better system.**

But working with collectives like TAWOMA is a better way forward for the jewelry industry and represents some real change. It encourages partnerships that are fairer to the people living nearest the source of gems. They also have agency over the mining and selling of the gems and this is important to me too.

So there you have it – how I went from no gems, to lab-grown gems, and then to mine-to-market and traceable stones. How about you, did you go through any changes when sourcing for your jewelry collection?

*A quickie definition of the eco-issues with lab-grown – Depending on what country the gems are grown in, the factories and labs might be coal-powered, or natural gas-powered (hello fracking), which makes them not-so eco-friendly compared to mining. It essentially zeros out any environmental benefit of not mining by producing more pollution and more groundwater contamination.

** More info about TAWOMA and their genesis and action – https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/12752/Supporting_the_Disadvantaged_Ones.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

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