For a symbol of everlasting love, engagement rings and wedding bands can be tainted with gruesome stories about blood diamonds and toxic pollution. Sure, you can have one of the most unique engagement rings in the world, but what’s its story? Great marketing teams can help the brand create a pretty portrayal of sustainability stories, but are they really true? 

If you’re reading this blog post, chances are you do want ethical diamonds, not just cheap diamond rings. So how do you spot a clean engagement ring and wedding band when you’re swept with endless options? 

These are the questions to ask your jeweler before settling on an engagement ring from them. 

Ethical diamonds aren't impossible, but they’re hard to find. This is because direct sourcing is an important part to keeping the supply chain clean. Diamonds have Kimberley Certificate which helps to keep conflict diamond off the market (though it’s far from perfect). But for gemstones other than diamond, there’s no international body to trace gemstones throughout the supply chain. This makes transparency complicated and costly. That means few jewelers know the working conditions of the miners and cutters that touched their gems. 

As a jeweler, if you don’t know where your stone is from, you can’t really make a difference in your supply chain. Ethical sourcing starts with transparent and traceable supply chains. 

Not all jewelers have gemstone mining pits in their backyard, but some do. All sorts of gemstones are mined throughout the world. Look for jewelers who have close proximity to mining sites and purchase their gemstones locally, or jewelers who can show you behind the scenes photos and videos of them meeting the artisanal miners that they buy from. 

The more you know about where your metals come from, how they were mined or produced, the more you know whether that’s responsible or not. And from there, you can drive change. Make it better than it was. 

Let’s take gold as an example. With Russia’s assets being frozen, Russia is turning to their gold reserves to subsidize their military aggression against Ukraine. They basically use gold to finance the war. Gold from unknown sources can have unintended consequences like this. 

The use of recycled gold is growing as an ethical alternative. But how does recycled gold stop or improve new gold mining? Truth is - it doesn’t. Since gold is basically money, companies are still seeing a lot of value in digging gold for liquid assets. Recycling gold does little to stop the damage of gold mining, since the demand for gold remains. 

Recycled gold is also problematic in its traceability. Since there’s no way of knowing where the gold comes from, recycled gold might have a history just as dirty as normal gold. This is because it easily circulates through various anonymous transactions, even used in money laundering. For instance, Dubai is notorious for buying dirty gold and revamp it into new jewelry pieces, then selling it under the ‘recycled gold’ label. 

That’s why we skip recycled gold, and go for traceable gold, where we know the exact people and processes involved. We purchase directly from artisanal miners in Borneo.

Jewelry, just like cars, can be made in an assembly line. This is true whether or not the retail brand is a fast fashion company. So don’t be fooled. 

Consider businesses who put effort in building relationships with their partners, who’d tell you how their working relationship began, and who aren't trying to put a facade over their jewelry making process. 

Being transparent and measuring impact isn’t easy to anyone, including the most ethical jewelers out there. Writing an annual impact report or sustainability report asks you to dive deep into your supply chains. Designers and retail brands are often on the ‘easier’ end of accepting finished goods. So whether or not they’re directly involved in the supply chain, it’s always a good thing to analyze the impact of their products throughout the supply chain.  

So what kind of impact are we talking about here? Things like: pollution and use of toxic chemicals (like mercury), deforestation, fair pay, etc. The further down you go in the supply chain, the more damage you might see, and the more chances it’s being obscured. Jewelers who spend time unpacking this information is worth your time.