Its so easy to get caught up with the beauty and excitement of a ring and forget about where it came from. In the spirit of Earth Day, we'd like to educate our readers about what we can do to be more aware of the issues surrounding conflict diamonds and gems.
In order to understand what exactly it means to wear eco-friendly jewelry, we contacted Brilliant Earth, San Francisco based jewelers committed to providing ethically and environmentally responsible fine jewelry. We love the story of how this company started - out of a marriage proposal. When the groom could not find a reliable source that could guarantee conflict free diamonds, the couple created Brilliant Earth to provide certified conflict free diamonds as an alternative to current diamond industry practices. Just fabulous!
Image Courtesy of: http://www.brilliantearth.com/loose-diamonds/
Here are some eco-tidbits courtesy of Brilliant Earth that are worth knowing...
1. Conflict diamonds have funded devastating civil wars in Africa, ending millions of lives. These "blood diamonds", are associated with human rights abuses, environmental damage, and terrorism.
2. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KP), was established in 2003 to prevent "blood diamonds" from entering the mainstream rough diamond market. It imposes extensive requirements on its members to enable them to certify shipments of rough diamonds as ‘conflict-free’.
3. Recent events illustrate that the KP is not as reliable as we thought - they continue to certify diamonds from Zimbabwe, even though diamond mining there is causing unspeakable human suffering.
4. A 2004 Amnesty International survey found that 83% of US jewelers says their customers ‘rarely or never’ inquire about the source of diamonds.
5. A similar study in 2007 found that 56% of jewelers do not even have an auditing procedure in place to prevent the retail of conflict diamonds. Those that do rely on the faulty KP certification.
We hope to do our part to help create awareness and encourage responsible ring buying. So, in the spirit of Earth Day, all week we'll be featuring posts on what we can do as consumers, as well as photos of eco-friendly rings.
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