Jewelry For A Better World
Last October, in Boston, I met Shamsa Diwani, from the Tanzania Women Miners Association (TAWOMA). She opened a small paper wrapping, showing me exquisite tanzanite that sparkled like the afternoon sky.
Tanzanite is a stone I’ve shied away from. Too many people have died in the large tanzanite mines, some of which employ child labor. Yet the pieces I saw and purchased were from small, safe claims. They were mined and polished through a program designed to alleviate economic hardship and support the “sheer entrepreneurial drive” of Tanzanian women.
As an activist in the jewelry sector, Diwani’s ethically sourced stones were exactly what I was looking for. But if you are the average person walking into a jewelry store, seduced by the bling in the case, you probably don’t consider sourcing issues. Yet what you support with your jewelry dollars has a profound effect.
An average wedding ring, which represents love and commitment, could in its making, yield twenty tons mercury sludge into the watersheds of Peru. Thousands of people are wearing engagement diamonds that funded conflicts resulting in the deaths of about four million Africans. The very people who have been responsible for these environmental and social atrocities are still doing business as usual, relying on an ignorant public.
My goal is to make it socially unacceptable for any jewelry to be made that is not from ecologically and socially responsible sources.
But in order to change, I need your help.
Artisan Jewelry From Mine To Market
To have jewelry that truly does support the world we want to see, we must begin to think about jewelry the way a shopper at the Santa Fe Farmers Market thinks about food. Instead of from market to table, we talk about what happens from mine to market.
When people think of mining, they generally consider large operations with giant earth moving equipment. In fact, in the jewelry sector, there are between fifteen and twenty million small scale “artisan” miners.
According to the World Bank, with families and communities, over 100 million people depend upon small scale mining for survival. These artisanal miners produce more raw materials and benefit more people than all the large scale multinational operations combined. Yet it is often the small producer who benefits least from their resources.
The chaotic nature of small-scale mining districts can lead to unsafe and unfair working conditions and environmental damage. Artisanal mining can be a beneficial contributor to economic growth in the developing world only when principals of sustainability are introduced.
A small group of jewelers and manufacturers within the jewelry sector are working hard to bring more of the wealth generated in the jewelry store back to producer communities. The customer then gets jewelry worthy of its talismanic value.
Indeed, jewelry is a fundamental repository of culture and art and human beings have been adorning themselves for over seventy-five thousand years. Traditionally, the sourcing of the material and soul of the maker was essential to the actual piece which was worn as an object of power.
When you combine artisanal production with responsible sourcing, including recycled precious metal, then you begin to have a piece with spiritual sparkle.
What You Need To Know
The jewelry sector is not going to change without market incentives.
If you want to purchase jewelry that is responsibly sourced, you only need to know one question:
Can you trace all the components of this piece of jewelry from mine, through production, to market?
Do not expect perfection. The supply chain for ethical sourcing is still spotty and the information you want may not be available even to the jeweler. But here are some basic tips.
About 20% of the precious metal from all jewelry comes directly from mines. Ask for jewelry made with 100% recycled gold. If it is not available, assume the precious metal is from untraceable international sources, which means, “Dirty Gold.”
Second, ask if fair trade gemstones are available. A jeweler who cares about these ethical sourcing issues will know where at least some of his gemstones are actually sourced.
Finally, find out about who is making the jewelry. We have no idea what is taking place in the jewelry manufacturing plants of China, which is where many commercial stores source from. With so many excellent jewelers in Santa Fe, there is no reason why you cannot find a piece that is made here.
With this information, you have all the basics. If just five percent of people walking into a jewelry store asked for recycled precious metal jewelry and gems that could be traced to their fair trade source, the industry would change.
