Have you ever thought about where your jewellery comes from? How is the gold mined and where does it come from? How are the diamonds extracted, cut and sold? What methods are used to farm the pearls? Sadly, there is nothing eco-friendly about the jewellery business today. It has a long history of human rights abuse, environmental destruction, and fair trade violations.
However, by supporting businesses that trade in eco-friendly jewellery, you can make a real difference in the world. Eco-friendly jewellery is manufactured using methods that are both environmentally and socially responsible. Every day, more jewellery companies are waking up to discover that they can make money selling eco-friendly earrings, wedding rings, and necklaces. That is because of the growing number of people willing to support environmentally responsible businesses.
Gold Mining Practices
When it comes to safety standards, labor practices, and respect for native populations, the gold mining industry has an extremely poor track record. It takes a lot of dynamite to rip open the earth to mine the ore is needed for precious metals. Gold mining in particular is harmful because of the cyanide and mercury used in the process. These poisonous chemicals contaminate groundwater sources and destroys the health of nearby communities and local wildlife.
You can help to reduce these environmental impacts by making a choice to buy jewellery made from eco-friendly gold. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to look for jewellery made from recycled gold. By recycling, you are reducing the demand for new gold mining operations. Since it takes about 20 tons of ore to manufacture a single ring, you can make a big impact on mining operations by simply buying recycled gold.
Precious Metal Recycling
Precious metals, including gold, are able to be recycled over and over again without losing their quality. Eco-friendly rings made from recycled gold have absolutely the same quality as those made from newly-mined gold. When gold is recycled it is normally done so from gold scrap, in a nutshell a scrap gold buyer purchases peoples unwanted rings, necklaces, chains, bracelets, even dental gold. These items are then placed in a crucible and melted into one sold gold bar. This bar can ranged from 40% actual gold content up to 99% gold content. These ‘scrap bars’ are then sold to a primary refiner where then can then be turned into gold grain, sheet, wire, plating, solder, finding and more which are then resold to jewellers or other industries. Some primary refiners turn their scrap bars into fine gold or bullion depending on demand.
With the recent recession many scrap gold buyers have appeared on the scene and many people in need of extra cash have used their services, this in my opinion has depleted the amount of scrap available and will have done so for the near future until people have extra funds to purchase more jewellery. Another problem which may arise is the fact that gold has risen greatly to record highs and so has the price of gold jewellery which will make it difficult for most folks to invest in new jewellery, only time will tell.