A new gold standard - Alliance for Responsible Mining

JEWELLERY
Jewellery: a
tale of love,
death and
hope
Gold mining in El Paso, Choco rainforest, Colombia.
Photo by Christian Cheesman, CRED director
24 www.ethicalconsumer.org JANUARY/FEBRUARY ‘11
Responsibly sourced
jewellery is now
available. But the
mainstream is still an
ethical minefield, argues
Leonie Nimmo.
The Chilean San José mine was propelled
to infamy in 2010 thanks to the
rescue of 33 miners that had been
trapped underground for 69 days. Live on
television the world witnessed the incredible
event, a testimony to human endurance and
technological achievement. But why were those
lives risked in the first place, in a notoriously
dangerous type of mine, responsible for
regular fatalities? During all of the news
reports of distraught wives and girlfriends,
their hope, love – even their underwear – there
was a deafening silence from the mining
industry.
The supply chains which bring us precious
metals and gemstones have, at their source,
some horrific human rights abuses and
environmental crimes. A catalogue of atrocities
from around the globe includes dead and
damaged miners, displaced indigenous people,
slavery, mass rapes and land and water sources
poisoned to such an extent that they will never
recover.
But positive change is afoot. Recent years
have witnessed some serious attempts to
improve the trade and February 2011 brings
us the first Fairtrade and Fairmined certified
gold, following the launch of standards in
2010. Campaign groups have made significant
strides in pressuring the big name jewellers
to implement measures that begin to address
some of the problems that are almost
synonymous with their products. There are
also a growing number of ethical jewellers
which know where their materials come from
and in what conditions they are produced.
Many of these are driven by a genuine desire
to ensure that local people in impoverished
countries benefit from the riches that surround
them. So, thanks to the determination of
a dedicated group of activists within the
industry, it is now completely possible to
purchase responsibly sourced jewellery.
This report examines some of the issues
surrounding gold and diamonds.
Over the following pages we take a look at
two very different initiatives designed to
improve supply chains – the governmentled
Kimberley Process, with a stated aim to
eliminate trade in conflict diamonds, and
the grassroots approach of Fairtrade and
Fairmined gold (see page 27). And on page
29 we introduce jewellery companies with
credible ethical credentials.

Diamonds
The Kimberley Process (KP) is a voluntary
diamond certification scheme that was
established in 2003 following years of
diamond-fuelled civil wars in West Africa.
Its members are governments with the
EU represented as a one member. Nongovernmental
organisations and campaign
groups have observer status alongside
industry which is represented by the World
Diamond Council. The Kimberley Process has
no legislative power but member governments
must implement national laws in line with
Kimberley procedures. Most mainstream
jewellers now offer KP certified diamonds
promoted as ‘conflict free’.
For the most part the
conscience of consumers
has been appeased.
In the early years the
scheme made recognisable
progress but inherent
problems have become
impossible to ignore.
A fundamental issue is
that the KP only considers
diamonds that fund civil
wars and militia groups
‘conflict diamonds’.
Therefore violence carried
out by state forces is essentially sanctioned.
With a membership that includes countries
such as the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Angola, and Sierra Leone, it is easy to see
why this has been a sticking point. The group
makes its decisions by consensus, therefore
any member state can effectively veto
progress. According to Annie Dunnebacke
of the campaign group Global Witness, this
invariably results in “the lowest common
denominator” prevailing. 1
The KP certifies nation states rather
than individual mines and currently the
only country recognised as not meeting its
standards is the Côte d’Ivoire. This allows the
organisation to claim that today less than 1%
of diamonds are conflict diamonds; down
from 15% before the scheme was launched. 2
Kimberley in Crisis
The Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe
have thrown the KP its biggest challenge
to date. In the words of CRED Jewellery’s
Business Director Christian Cheesman, the
organisation is “in freefall”. 4 As this magazine
was going to print it may well have just
crashed and burned. On 16th November
2010, the Zimbabwean KP monitor Abbey
Chikane was reported to have approved
Marange diamonds for export despite the
fact that the organisation’s plenary meeting
in Jerusalem ended on 4th November at a
deadlock over the issue of the Marange fields.
Sources claim they could be the biggest
diamond reserves in the world, potentially
“People woke up
in the morning
and the law had
been changed. The
punishment for
crossing the newly
drawn line was
death”. 3
providing 40% of rough diamond supply
globally. 1
Following the discovery of diamonds in the
east of Zimbabwe in 2006, the government
withdrew the rights held by a British company
to mine the area and opened it up to anybody
and their pickaxe. People flocked there from
places as far afield as Belgium, Equatorial
Guinea and Pakistan. 5 Five months later a
police operation was launched, ostensibly
to prevent illegal mining. Instead, against
a background of human rights abuses, the
police forced miners to form syndicates under
their ‘protection’.
The diamond rush reached its peak in
November 2008 when it was brutally crushed
by the Zimbabwean
military one month after
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party
agreed to share power
with the Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC). Over three
weeks, an estimated 214
people were slaughtered
by troops and helicopter
gunships. 5 “People woke
up in the morning and the
law had been changed”,
according to an editor
of online Zimbabwean
publication Zimeye, who did not wish to be
named, “But they didn’t have access to that
information. The punishment for crossing the
newly drawn line was death.” 3
The military has since formed their own
syndicates, at times using forced labour,
including child labour, from the neighbouring
villages and towns. Evictions, torture, rapes,
beatings, executions and the refusal of medical
care to people injured in the diamond fields
have all been reported. 6
According to Global Witness, the military
today control 95%-97% of the Marange
fields. 1 The rest are controlled by concessions
which were granted to two South African
companies in a way that allegedly violated the
country’s own tendering laws. 7 The companies
are reportedly headed up by senior former
military officials and close allies of Mugabe
who, along with the military, were rewarded
for their loyalty to his ZANU-PF party.
Following pressure from human rights
organisations, exports from the Marange
mines were temporarily frozen out from
the Kimberley Process in November 2009.
However, this in itself created a significant
crack in the Process as it violates the the
principle of state, rather than individual
mine, accreditation and thereby drastically
reduces the KP’s leverage. Whilst the Marange
diamonds were (supposedly) held up, those
from the other two diamond mines in
Zimbabwe, one majority owned by mining
giant Rio Tinto, continued to flow.
A Joint Work Plan was agreed and the
buyers’ guide
Zimbabwean government was expected to
implement a set a reforms to demilitarise the
Marange mines and prevent smuggling. The
Kimberley Process appointed Abbey Chikane,
a South African national, to devise the Plan
and monitor the country’s progress. In May
2010 he visited the country, a trip which
apparently led to the arrest of a member of
the civilian group that has official recognition
by the Kimberley Process as a partner agency,
the Centre for Research and Development
(CRD). “It was a terrifying experience for the
whole organisation”, said the Zimeye editor,
“they were literally panicking, they were
looking to get people out of the country”. 3
Following Chikane’s report, which was
heavily criticised by Human Rights Watch, the
Kimberley Process approved two shipments to
be exported from Marange at a meeting in St.
Petersburg in July 2010.
In September, the Daily Mail reported
that in a government to government deal,
rough diamonds from the mines were being
exported to China under the supervision of
the Chinese military in return for guns and
ammunition. 8
A deal was then struck with an Indian
consortium of companies in October. It was
agreed that the Marange fields would supply
$1.2 billion of diamonds a year to newly
formed company Surat Rough Diamond
Sourcing India Limited (SRDSIL). Little
mention was made of what would happen
should the KP rule against the Marange
diamonds at its November meeting, and
the issue remains unclear. A clue perhaps
lies in the fact that the Indian consortium
committed to providing the equipment and
training for cutting and polishing to happen
in-country. Another gaping loophole in the
Kimberley Process is that it only refers to
Zimbabwean Minister of Mines Obert Mpofu
with handfuls of Marange diamonds at the Blue
Star factory in Surat, India, October 2010
image sourced from www.diamonds.net
JANUARY/FEBRUARY ‘11 www.ethiscore.org 25

JEWELLERY
rough diamonds. Therefore those that are cut
and polished in their country of origin can
still legitimately be traded within the system,
regardless of whether they would otherwise
have been defined as conflict diamonds.
Diamond dealers in the USA have since
sent urgent messages to their Chinese and
Indian counterparts requesting that the
Marange diamonds be separated from other
supply chains. President of jewellery retailer
Borsheim’s pleaded: “I beg of Surat people
to please segregate the Marange goods,
before they supply us with the orders.” The
SRDSIL has responded that this would be
“impossible”. 9 There are clear signs within
the industry that the Marange diamonds
could destroy the legitimacy of the Kimberley
Process, and potentially it won’t be long before
consumer awareness catches up.
Meanwhile Zimbabweans brace themselves
for a new wave of violence in the run-up to
elections, expected in June 2011. Reports
of harassment by ZANU-PF militia are
already beginning to leak out. The Minister
of Defence has reportedly already said he
will not allow the opposition to take over;
likewise soldiers have stated they would
not support the MDC. 3 Unchecked, the
Marange diamonds could well help to prop
up Mugabe’s regime and its corrupt elite for
many years to come.
Laboratory grown
diamonds
Laboratory grown diamonds, also
called synthetic or cultured diamonds,
are now a commercial reality in the
jewellery industry. Identical in chemical
composition to natural diamonds, and
substantially cheaper, they are an obvious
way to avoid purchasing blood diamonds.
However, question marks remain
over the environmental impact of the
manufacturing process and the working
conditions in laboratories, many of which
are reportedly in Asia. Retailer Vivien
Johnston says she has been unable to
access much information about employee
conditions and auditable standards:
“Nobody trying to sell me them has been
able to tell me”. Johnston and Cheesman
also concur that buying lab grown
diamonds displaces the development
potential of responsibly sourced natural
diamonds.
26 www.ethicalconsumer.org JANUARY/FEBRUARY ‘11
International Jeweltree Foundation
There are a growing number of jewellers who know their supply chains
and only source from places that they are confident meet social and
environmental standards. Organisations such as the Jeweltree Foundation
help to make this a reality by supplying retailers with gemstones and precious
metals with guaranteed supply chain transparency. Their diamonds are sourced
from places such as the Liqhobong Diamond Cooperative, a women’s mining co-operative in
Lesotho.
Silver
Many ethical jewellery companies offer recycled silver products, and while some jewellers
offer ‘fairly traded’ silver, there is no Fairtrade Foundation certification for silver.
Israel and the Diamond
Trade
In a suburb of Tel Aviv, a forest of gleaming
skyscrapers marks the Diamond District,
home to perhaps the biggest diamond trading
floor in the world. Diamonds accounted for
24% of Israeli export earnings in 2009, worth
£7.3 bn. 10 According to Vivien Johnston of
ethical jewellery retailer Fifi Bijoux, the Israeli
diamond industry has historically had a
reputation of being associated with the trade
in blood or conflict diamonds: “They went in
where other people feared to tread”. 11
Today, however, Israeli diamonds have been
the focus of protests for a different reason.
In the lead up to the Jerusalem meeting a
Facebook campaign, spearheaded by the Irish
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), sought
to highlight the significance of diamonds for
Ramat Gan city, Tel Aviv, Israel
– ‘The Diamond District’
image © Slidezero | Dreamstime.com
Israel’s exports and economy and the role that
this has played in financing the occupation
of Palestine. For those campaigning for the
boycott of Israeli goods, focussing on the
diamond industry could be significant.
The possibility that Israeli diamonds may
have been processed in illegal settlements
presents another boycott angle. Who Profits?,
the organisation that monitors settlement
industrial production, has no record of such
activity, and have pointed out that much
Israeli diamond processing is now outsourced
to India. 12 However, Salwa Alenat, of Israeli
workers’ rights organisation Kav LaOved,
told Ethical Consumer that she had met
with a Palestinian who worked in a diamond
workshop located in the industrial settlement
of Atatrot in August 2010. 13
Links
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM)
www.communitymining.org
Communities and Small-Scale Mining
(CASM) www.artisanalmining.org
Fair Jewellery Action
http://blog.gregvalerio.com
Fairtrade Foundation
www.fairtrade.org.uk
Fairtrade Labelling Organizations
International (FLO) www.fairtrade.net
Jeweltree Foundation
www.jeweltreefoundation.org
Kimberley Process
www.kimberleyprocess.com
Initiative for Responsible Mining
Assurance www.responsiblemining.net
Madison Dialogue
www.madisondialogue.org
No Dirty Gold Campaign
www.nodirtygold.org
Responsible Jewellery Council
www.responsiblejewellery.com
References: 1 Telephone interview with Annie Dunnebacke of Global Witness, 10/11/2010 2 http://www.kimberleyprocess.com/background/index_en.html [accessed 25/11/10] 3 Telephone
interview with editor of Zimeye, 10/11/2010 4 Telephone interview with Christian Cheesman, CRED Business Director, 17/11/2010 5 Diamonds in the Rough: Human Rights Abuses in the Marange
Diamond Fields of Zimbabwe, Human Rights Watch, June 2009 6 “Diamonds in the Rough” Human Rights Watch, June 2009; Zimeye interview, 10/11/2010; “Return of the Blood Diamond: The
deadly race to control Zimbabwe’s new-found diamond wealth”, Global Witness, June 2010 7 “Deliberate Chaos: Ongoing Human Rights Abuses in the Marange Diamond Fields of Zimbabwe”,
Human Rights Watch, June 2010 8 “Mugabe’s darkest secret: An £800bn blood diamond mine he’s running with China’s Red Army”, the Daily Mail, 18/09/10 available from http://www.dailymail.
co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1313123/Robert-Mugabes-darkest-secret-An-800bn-blood-diamond-run-Chinas-Red-Army.html [accessed 19/11/10] 9 “Zimbabwe Diamond Deal Faces Western
Criticism”, 31/10/2010, available from http://www.diamondpriceguide.com/news/nc205_World-News/n88444_Zimbabwe-Diamond-Deal-Faces-Western-Criticism, [accessed 19/11/2010] 10 http://
www.intracen.org/appli1/TradeCom/TP_EP_CI_HS4.aspx?IN=84&RP=376&YR=2006&IL=84%20%20Boilers,%20machinery;%20nuclear%20reactors,%20etc&TY=E [accessed 19/11/2010] 11
Telephone interview with Vivien Johnston of Fifi Bijoux, 12/11/2010 12 Email from Merav Amir, of Who Profits from the Occupation project, received 08/11/2010 13 Interview with Salwa Alenat,
Kav LaOved, 03/11/2010, Manchester, and email received 13/11/2010.

A new gold
standard
John Childs takes a
look at the launch of
Fairtrade gold.
Artisanal gold mining in Tanzania. Photo by Joseph Rengu.
Fairtrade gold was supposed to be
impossible. At least that’s what Michael
Barratt Brown, fair trade pioneer and
co-founder of Cafédirect, said in his clarion
call heralding the fair trade movement’s
arrival into the public consciousness in the
early 1990s. Metals and minerals markets
were, he argued, too complex to be able to
guarantee the supply chain “direct to the
final consumer” 1 . Fast-forward through two
decades of fair trade success, allied to the hard
work of campaigners, experts and miners, and
that assumption has been proved false. From
February 2011 consumers will be able to buy
fully traceable gold jewellery dually certified
as both ‘Fairtrade’ and ‘Fairmined’. This
will be the world’s first independent ethical
certification system for gold.
The Fairtrade/Fairmined labels’ aim is
to benefit artisanal and small-scale gold
miners who find it hard to achieve a fair
price for the gold that they extract. Their
work is dangerous, poorly regulated and
often environmentally damaging. Moreover,
small-scale miners are often characterised
in profoundly negative ways. Media and
governments in their home countries are
largely unsympathetic to their struggles,
privileging the rights of multinational
mining corporations. Small-scale miners are
represented variously as criminal, irrational,
or mercenary. In Tanzania, where I have
studied small-scale gold miners, they are
blamed for anything from environmental
destruction to the murder of albinos for body
parts.
It’s against this background that the
Fairtrade model promises to mark a
radical shift by recasting the figure of the
artisanal miner in a positive way, capable
of community-driven empowerment.
The miner is re-cast as responsible rather
than irresponsible, professional rather
than irrational, trustworthy rather than
opportunistic. Changing the prevailing
attitudes towards small-scale miners and
challenging the stereotypes that feed into
the marginalisation of millions of miners
worldwide is at the heart of efforts to improve
their livelihoods. Simply put, miners, and
their families, need to be taken seriously in
order for serious changes to happen.
Fairtrade gold has emerged through
a network of campaigners, experts and,
crucially, miners themselves. The collaborative
nature of the certification process aims to
combine the marketing experience of the
Fairtrade Labelling Organisation with the
technical understanding of the Alliance
for Responsible Mining (the ‘Fairmined’
element). Through this partnership gold
purchased is guaranteed to have been
mined for a fair price in an environmentally
responsible manner and with high levels of
labour standards.
buyers’ guide
The pilot Fairtrade gold projects are all in
South American countries. This is perhaps
unsurprising owing to the pre-existing
Fairtrade networks in place there. However,
Cred Jewellery’s Business Director Christian
Cheeseman, who has been instrumental in
the development of the Fairtrade standards,
told Ethical Consumer that plans are afoot to
move into other parts of the world. “There
are a heck of a lot of opportunities to work in
Africa and we are looking into opportunities
there,” he notes. The scope of the movement’s
focus is, then, geographically broad. However,
artisanal and small-scale mining is, in many
countries, usually undertaken without a
licence (often for good reason given the high
cost of obtaining one), and so effectively
operates outside of the law. As Fairtrade will
only be open to licensed miners, the number
of miners that Fairtrade can reach may be
limited. Also informal buying networks that
offer prices above the market rate may be seen
as a better option for some miners selling gold
in certain countries.
Nevertheless, Fairtrade’s gold certification
system is, simply put, the only way to
guarantee that gold mined on a small-scale
has been done so responsibly. There are,
it should be noted, a number of ethical
initiatives that attempt to raise the standards
prevalent in large-scale mining. Earthwork’s
No Dirty Gold campaign, for
example, aims to raise consumer
awareness of the environmental
and human rights abuses that are a
feature of certain large-scale mine projects
worldwide (see page 29).
For the consumer looking to buy ethically
produced gold there are a number of
questions. Should I buy large-scale or smallscale
produced gold? Is recycled gold better?
Should I even buy gold at all? Fairtrade’s
promise of a fully traceable and transparent
model offers hope to artisanal and small-scale
miners in a long neglected and poverty driven
industry.
Reference 1 Barratt-Brown, M. (1993). Fair Trade: Reform and
realities in the International Trading System. London: Zed.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY ‘11 www.ethiscore.org 27

JEWELLERY
The winding
rivers of
Alaska’s
Bristol Bay witness
the largest salmon run
on the planet. Those fish
form part of an eco-system that supports
a glorious range of ancient American fauna:
caribou, moose, grizzly bears and, of course,
salmon fishermen. Snow-capped mountains
provide the stunning backdrop to a fishing
way of life that stretches back centuries. Sarah
Palin chose to name her daughter, Bristol,
after this special place. Yet Alaska’s former
governor supports a mining project that
threatens its very soul.
For Bristol Bay is quite literally a gold mine.
Or a copper mine, depending on prices in
the metal markets. Exploratory missions have
discovered deposits worth over $300 billion.
As a result, mining giants Northern Dynasty
and Anglo American are pressing hard to
commence operations at ‘Pebble Mine’, which
would be the largest open pit operation in
North America.
These plans have met fierce opposition
from a coalition of local residents,
environmental campaigners and fishermen
worldwide. For Bristol Bay’s ore deposits lie
directly beneath salmon spawning habitat.
Mining will generate as much as 10 billion
tons of mine waste, stored at the headwaters
of Bristol Bay behind large dams, according
to campaign website OurBristolBay. And
image © Sashkinw | Dreamstime.com
Red gold
Will Hodson reports on a pristine wilderness sitting on a gold mine.
28 www.ethicalconsumer.org JANUARY/FEBRUARY ‘11
dams, as we all know, get busted. Hungary’s
recent flood of toxic waste should serve as
a warning. And Anglo-American have been
implicated in waste spills and water pollution
before. The company points to the significant
experience of their current CEO on matters
environmental. Unfortunately, that experience
includes serving on BP’s ethics, safety and
environment board.
‘Red Gold’, screened in London in
November is a beautiful, if quixotic, film that
brings Bristol Bay to life. Our evening was all
the more intriguing for the attendance, and
frequent intervention, of Anglo American’s
Chief Operating Officer for Pebble Mine.
Grizzly mother and
cubs at Moraine
Creek, Katmai
National Park.
Photo by Ben Knight
Local Alaskans greet
Sir Mark Moody
Stuart, president of
Anglo American’s
board of directors,
in Dillingham,
Alaska, on March
28, 2009.
Photo by Matt Davidson
“I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t talk too much.
It’s important that your voice is heard
too.” Bizarrely, those were the words of a
subsistence fisherman, addressing Anglo
American’s COO. Never mind that the mining
giant has hired an army of lobbyists to make
their voice heard in the corridors of power.
Anglo-American claims that it “will not go
where people don’t want us.”Campaigners cite
a recent survey which found 80% of Bristol
Bay area residents oppose the mine. Yet the
precautionary principle cuts little ice with
Bruce Jenkins – Northern Dynasty’s COO and
Red Gold’s pantomime villain.
“In my opinion,” he began, trying
desperately to remember his Oscar Wilde
quotebook, “conventional wisdom is always
conventional... but not always wise.”
Far wiser, imply the mining companies, is a
simple cost-benefit analysis. For them, $300bn
of Pebble Mine’s metals outweigh any possible
costs to Bristol Bay’s salmon catch, at just
over $100m annually. But how do you weigh
a way of life? The cod-forsaken ghost towns
on Canada’s east coast have lost far more than
their fisheries. Bruce Jenkins in particular
should recall Oscar Wilde’s definition of
a cynic – “a man who knows the price of
everything and the value of nothing.”
Find out more: www.earthworksaction.org
www.ourbristolbay.com

Ethical
Jewellers CRED
Many jewellery companies now make ethical
claims about their products, and as always it
is wise to exercise caution. A genuine ethical
jeweller will be able to tell you where their
products have been sourced, and provide
some detail about the communities that have
supplied the raw materials. Transparency and
traceability are the key issues so it should be
fairly obvious to prospective buyers whether
retailers genuinely know their supply chains.
The sector doesn’t fit very neatly into
our existing ethiscore system. Instead
we’ve selected five jewellers we are happy
to recommend. Most featured positively in
Earthworks’ No Dirty Gold campaign recent
‘Tarnished Gold?’ report, which assessed the
jewellery industry’s progress on the ethical
sourcing of metals. Companies were rated
in the report against the campaign’s ‘Golden
Rules,’ with Fairtrade gold pioneers CRED
receiving the highest rating. Prices range
anywhere between £80 and £10,000.
April Doubleday
Golden Rules score: 11.5 out of 16.
A contemporary jewellery designer and
maker who works with responsibly sourced
gold from co-operative mines, mined in
accordance with Fairtrade and Fairmined
Standards. Uses recycled silver, traceable
diamonds from Canada and lab-grown
coloured gems. Re-designs existing jewellery
for re-use.
Studio in North Devon and attends craft
and jewellery fairs in other locations.
www.aprildoubleday.com Tel: 07773 709334.
CRED Jewellery
Golden Rules score: 13.5 out
of 16
Founder members of the
Alliance for Responsible
Mining (ARM) and Fairtrade
jewellery pioneers, CRED has
been instrumental in making
Fairtrade gold and platinum a reality through
its work with the Colombian co-operative
Oro Verde. Continues to campaign for
Fairtrade standards throughout jewellery
supply chain. In the absence of a supply
of fresh silver that meets ethical standards,
CRED use 100% recycled silver sourced
from the UK, but continues to seek supplies
of silver that meet Fairtrade criteria. “We’re
trying our hardest!” according to Business
Director Christian Cheesman. Uses fully
traceable diamonds sourced from Canada,
Australia and Namibia. Coloured gemstones
come with a certificate of origin. Supply chain
policy published on website.
Studios in London and Chichester, plus
stockists.
www.credjewellery.com Tel: 01243 773588.
CRED Eden Wash engagement ring
Fifi Bijoux
Golden Rules score: 11.5 out of 16.
Jeweltree Foundation Licence Holder (see
page 26).
Founder Vivien Johnston is Chair and
co-founder of the British Ethical Jewellery
Association. Company is actively engaged
with multi-stakeholder initiatives such as
ARM and Communities & Small Scale
Mining (CASM), thus driving positive change
in the sector. Sources gold and platinum
from community mines in Argentina and
Colombia which are Fairtrade compliant as
well as meeting ecological criteria. Uses fully
traceable diamonds from mines and polishing
workshops which comply with ethical criteria.
Gems sourced only from traceable, ethical
sources.
www.fifibijoux.com Tel: 0208 133 2531 or
07789 224705.
Additional research by Louise Sheridan.
buyers’ guide
Fairtrade wedding bands
Ingle and Rhode
Golden Rules score: 13 out of 16.
Sources fair trade gold from the EcoAndina
Foundation in the north-west of Argentina
and from Oro Verde in Colombia. Uses fully
traceable Canadian diamonds, and cut and
polished under fair pay and conditions,
and produced in a way that minimises
environmental impact. Does not use silver.
Sources rubies and sapphires from small-scale
cooperatives in the Global South. Gemstones
cut and polished in good conditions. Offers
transparency and traceability for every aspect
their jewellery: gemstones, metals and labour.
Also sources lab grown diamonds produced in
the USA and cut in South Africa.
www.ingleandrhode.co.uk Tel: 020 3468
6592.
Oria Ethical Jewellery
Recently signed up to Golden Rules: score
not yet available.
Gold sourced from Eco Andina cooperative
mines in Argentina. Fairly traded
silver from artisanal miners in Bolivia.
Traceable diamonds from mines in Canada
and Australia sourced “wherever possible”.
Gemstones from Brazil, Kenya and Tanzania.
Studio in London, plus stockists, including
Element Jewellery (www.elementjewellery.
com).
www.oriajewellery.co.uk Tel: 020 8133 4518.
Fifi Bijoux Ardent pendant. Ethical 9ct
gold and white topaz.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY ‘11 www.ethiscore.org 29