Ethical gold, clean gold or whatever you want to call it, there are many reasons why people and those in the jewelry industry are seeking out gold that hasn’t left a destructive trail behind it.
Ethical gold is defined as gold that’s come from fair trade practices. Fair trade practices emphasize creating safe and fair paying jobs for their employees mining the gold.
Recycled gold is defined as gold that is reused from old jewelry or other materials, and goes through a refurbishing process. Recycled gold doesn’t require mining into the earth and instead uses a refinery process.
Luckily, there are a few different options when sourcing responsible or ecofriendly gold. Here at Les Olson Jewelers, we use recycled gold and only go through the world’s greenest refinery.
Although It is certainly possible for gold that has previously been unethically mined to enter the refinery process, our chosen refinery only accepts gold from sources that comply with international fair trade and fair mined standards. Recycled gold eliminates the step of drilling into the earth’s surface to recover new gold, eliminating much of the negative environmental impact around gold sourcing
We’re proud to say that we only buy and ship gold from a refinery that is a member of RJC (Responsible Jewelry Council), a standard setting organization with a mission to implement credible mechanisms for verifying responsible business practices in the diamond, gold and platinum group metals supply chain through third party auditing.
In addition to helping regulate the gold industry, the refinery we use has a process to refining gold that has a very low environmental impact. All wastewater goes through a treatment process so that zero discharge is released into water ways. They also support pollution prevention programs, refine using the Miller Process to reduce acid use by 85%, and use energy and materials as efficiently as possible to conserve nonrenewable resources.
Consumers are becoming more and more conscious of the products they wear and use every day and gold is certainly no exception. Les Olson Jewelers is committed to being on the ethical side of anything we do.
