It’s only fairly recently that jewellers have begun to label their products as being ‘made from recycled gold’ or ‘recycled silver’ and unfortunately this isn’t because of some great shift in the way the jewellery industry does things.  This does not represent some kind of positive change, it’s just some re-wording and re-branding, basically greenwashing.

If recycling gold was the answer then there wouldn’t be a problem in the first place.  Gold has always been recycled, close to 100% of the gold ever mined is either in circulation or in storage.  People don’t throw away gold, however, over the years the mining of gold has been responsible for huge environmental damage and plenty of human misery and it still is today. 

What needs to change is how the process of mining is done, how the people doing it are treated and how well they are paid.  To do this you need to be involved in mining, not just pretend that it doesn’t exist or that it’s going to stop if we only recycle more gold.  It won’t.

From a jewellers point of view, re-wording some text on a website is the easy way out.  As gold has always been recycled, any jeweller ever could say ‘made with recycled gold’ and it would be true.

There is another way, Fairtrade gold has been available for more than 10 years.  If a jeweller or jewellery, company isn’t using Fairtrade gold its because they dont want to.  There are admittedly some hurdles to jump over in order to sell Fairtrade gold.  It does cost more, but then it actually does some good.

Miners and their communities are given a fair price for their work.  A ‘Fairtrade premium is paid and the mines must uphold strict health and safety standards to be certified.  The importance of health and safety conditions in the dangerous environment of a gold mine were bought into stark focus this week with the tragic news of the death of at least 50 miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mines collapsed after heavy rain trapping miners inside.  Local people dug with their hands to free trapped miners.

Be very careful of a jeweller who labels their products as made from recycled gold and describes them as ethical.  If they’re willing to pull the wool over your eyes about this then what else are they not telling the whole truth about? How else are you being mislead?