The Use of Precious Metals and Gemstones in Body Jewelry: Sourcing, Quality, and Ethical Considerations

While the cut, color, and quality of jewelry are important, so too are the ethical considerations. Mining precious metals and gemstones can involve a great amount of environmental destruction, impact on local communities, exploitation of workers, and worse.

Fortunately, the jewelry industry is growing increasingly conscientious. Modern consumers now actively look for sustainable jewelry options meaning there is a market for ethical jewelry.

Keep reading to better understand the issue and see how Salamander Jewelry is bringing ethical body jewelry to the market.

Jewelry ethical issues

Throughout its history, the jewelry market has been linked to exploitative practices. A single ancient Roman gold mine in Spain, for instance, involved a workforce of 60,000 slaves. Modern jewelry is similarly marred by ethical concerns.

Exploitation and environmental damage are chief among concerns. Most people are also familiar with the idea of gems causing conflict through movies like Blood Diamond which brought to light the issue of human rights within the industry.

All this means that jewelry can be quite controversial. Below, we’ll take a look at some of the biggest ethical issues regarding the jewelry industry.

Forced + child labor

One of the most damning issues surrounding the jewelry market is labor exploitation. Namely, people being forced to work under the threat of some kind of penalty or repercussion. For example, a miner operator may threaten to harm a worker or their family, withhold ID and documents, or even deprive them of shelter.

With many mine workers living hand to mouth in extreme poverty, they become trapped in an exploitative relationship due to fear of reprisal from their exploiters, police, and authorities.

The issue extends to child labor too. In Myanmar (Burma), for example, child and forced labor are an issue. In the mining of gemstones, even the voluntary participation of children is considered harmful.

This is because the ILO found an alarming number of precious metal and gemstone mining operations were clouded in a culture of drug abuse, violence, and even prostitution.

Metals and stones affected include:

• Gold
• Silver
• Emeralds
• Jade
• Rubies
• Sapphires
• Tanzanite

Environmental damage

The environmental impact of producing jewelry materials is equally damning.

Gold mining, especially, can seriously damage local ecosystems. Industrial gold extraction practices such as cyanide heap leaching and pit mining produce an enormous amount of toxic waste. This toxic grey byproduct is loaded with cyanide and heavy metals and is often dumped directly into nearby water sources.

Each year it’s estimated that 180 million tons of such waste are allowed to pollute rivers, oceans, and lakes. This kills marine life, contaminates plants, and harms animals that drink the water. On top of that, extensive gold mining can also lead to deforestation, soil erosion, and sulfuric acid pollution in water and air.

Gemstone mining tends to be less destructive than gold mining as chemicals are not needed. Most gem mining occurs close to the surface of the Earth.

Nevertheless, little research has been done on the carbon footprint of gemstone mining. Setting up even a small mining operation can produce a huge amount of carbon. With gems passing from mine to traders, cutters, and further, each tiny gem can be responsible for a large amount of carbon emissions.

Health and safety issues

Tens of thousands of people in South America, Africa, Asia work in mines used by the jewelry industry to escape poverty.

Due to the nature of mine-work, it has always been a dangerous occupation. With toxic gases, machinery accidents, explosions, cave-ins, and falls all possible, extracting minerals and stones for jewelry can lead to serious injury and even loss of life.

While mining for precious metals and gemstones has become a lot safer over the years, some more informal operations often cut corners and do not implement correct safety measures.

Unfortunately, this is often the case with forced and child labor. Exploited workers have no recourse and are forced to endure such dangerous conditions.

Solutions

The jewelry industry as a whole has a lot of work to do before it can be considered ethical.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic solution. Due to political, geological, and socioeconomic differences, boycotting is unlikely to have a great influence on the direction of the industry.

Instead, consumers, resellers, and producers should insist on transparency and traceability as much as possible. This means the ability to trace a piece of jewelry from the final product back to its raw materials along the supply chain.

This requires transparency as precious metals and gems are passed through many hands. Currently, there are several solutions proposed to make it easy for small and large-scale producers to help track jewelry, including some that use blockchain technology.

Being able to verify the ethical nature of all parties involved means retailers and consumers can make more conscientious choices.

How to tell if body jewelry is unethical?

Signs you may be dealing with an unethical jewelry manufacturer include:

• Lack of supply chain information
• Poorly made products with defects
• Low-quality, cheap materials
• Manufacturing information not available

Sustainable jewelry companies

If you’re looking to buy ethical wholesale jewelry, including body jewelry, stainless steel pieces, and more, visit Salamander Jewelry. We verify and trace materials and only work with ethical suppliers. Based in Thailand, we have a wide range of body jewelry for sale and believe in workers’ rights while minimizing our impact on the environment.

Check out Salamander Jewelry’s collection now.

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