Make one of the happiest days of your life one of the most sustainable. Say ‘yes’ to these sustainable engagement rings you’ll treasure forever.
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The most beautiful day in your life can also be beautiful to the environment and humanity. Today’s designers upcycle, engineer, and sustainably source diamonds and precious metals to craft stunning engagement rings that take a stance against child labor, water waste, and toxic chemicals eroding fragile ecosystems. As a sustainable warrior princess (yes that’s a Xena reference) wouldn’t it be nice to receive one of these sustainable engagement rings that we can all say ‘yes’ to?
When perusing for a sustainable engagement ring, you’ll notice three main ways designers ensure their rings fit into the ‘sustainable jewelry’ category. Lab-grown diamonds. Upcycled Materials. Fair Trade. Each addresses unethical conflicts, commits to transparency, and pursues ethical standards in the jewelry industry.
Lab Grown Diamonds
The Problem: The world’s ten biggest diamond mines extract the stones through open pits and underground mining. One such pit is a 250 sq mile pit in Eastern Zimbabwe. In 2012 Yale Environment 360 reported locals’ complaints about bathing or drinking from the river downstream of the mines. Rashes, sickness, and cattle deaths were a few of what they linked to contaminated water. Sadly, environmental laws are not always enforced, and tales like this spread from Zimbabwe to Australia.
The Solution: Just as the name implies, lab-grown diamonds are stones that are engineered in a lab by scientists. Tiny carbon seeds are grown in temperature and pressure-controlled environments that mimic the growing conditions of naturally mined diamonds. But these beauties offer a more transparent and happier ‘extraction’ tale than their natural counterparts.
Upcycled Metals
The Problem: The gold rush in Ghana has turned it into the second-largest gold producer in Africa at the cost of an eroding ecosystem. NCBI reported a study showing a 42% reduction in forests and farmland between 1986-2002. Between those years mines such as the Tarkwa mine depleted groundwater by 40%. The decrease in freshwater and natural drainage was linked to an increase in Malaria incidents in those regions.
The Solution: There’s a distinct art to reusing gold. Not all precious metals can be recycled, but yellow gold, in particular, can be shifted, refined, melted, and recast. You could even say that you’ll have something old & something new.
Fair Trade
The Problem: In 2015, the Human Rights Watch. published an expose of artisanal small-scale gold mining in the Philippines. Children as young as 9, put their lives at risk from mercury poisoning, asphyxiation, and collapsing infrastructures as they mined for gold underwater for 9 hours daily to earn about $10. What’s more disheartening is that the World Health Organization estimated that 1 million children between the ages of 5-7 worked in these mines in 2005.
The Solution: Fairtrade sets a standard that artisans earn a fair profit for their work, child labor is forbidden, and working environments ban hazardous materials, toxins, and gas.
Sustainability is more than just a buzzword. It’s a beautiful way of life. Say ‘yes’ to designers dedicated to imparting humanity and beauty to this traditional declaration of love.