Ethical Engagement Rings

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jfdi wrote: »

On my local BBC Radio y'day morning, as I was going to work, I heard a Chichester Jeweller talking about his shop.

He said he has personally visited all the mines etc where both his precious gems & metals come from as he was so concerned. He said he couldn't get insured for half the places!

He now sells only ethically produced jewellery.
And the name is.........? Duh! Can I remember? Sounded a bit like an Italian ice-cream firm - or his surname did - but my age has got the better of me & I've forgotten! Sorry!

That would be Cred - http://www.cred.tv/

I couldn't find another truly Fair Trade jeweler in this country - at least not to this standard. Other "ethical" diamonds are somewhat suspect, to say the least.

The Kimberley Process is a load of rubbish - it's good that they've thought of something to try and improve things, but there are a huge number of ways getting around a bit of essentially voluntary paperwork. The good thing is that it sends the right message - if enough people ask about it, jewelers will make some effort to make ethical choices. You cannot be sure, though, that a Kimberly diamond actually came from where you think it did - and all the nasty stuff you hear about diamonds is very real to this day (think slavery, guns and war).

Cred actually work with a Fair Trade mine and Greg Valerio - the owner (and almost certainly the bloke you heard on the radio) - regularly checks up on his sources. They'll hand-make you a ring in this country from gold or platinum (also sourced ethically) and using fair-trade diamonds or other gems (apparently silver is not available ethically from anywhere in the world that Greg can find, as yet). They're good people - I recommend them - but you do have to pay for the service. You are actually a part of the solution rather than the problem.

Buying second hand - or possibly buying second hand materials and having them built into a ring for you - would be another option. And it's one in the eye for the Diamond companies (or should I say company) who go out of their way to make second-hand diamonds unappealing.

SimonWiser_2

There are ways and means of ensuring that diamonds are ethical. Certainly in the late 1990s, blood diamonds were a problem and estimations were that these diamonds comprised around 10% of the total global diamond supply. Nowadays, since the introduction of the Kimberley Process back in 2000, it is thought that this number is now around 1%, so the problem still exists but on a much less scale. High quality diamond specialists such as DeJoria.co.uk will assure that their diamonds are conflict-free, by tracing the supply route of the diamond back through the chain.

Fire_Fox

Please click the SPAM button, Simon Wiser clearly thinks we are incapable of using Google! Your name is all over that website.

hethmar

Well he is a bit late for the OP as the thread is 3 years old - lol.

dobbie82

i know its an old thread but there is/was a gold mine in wales, and some goprgeous rings for under the £170 budget

http://www.clogau.co.uk/Jewellery/Rings.aspx