With Valentine's Day fast approaching and gold jewelry expected to be one of the top items on the holiday shopping list, environmental and human-rights activists urge shoppers to take a good look at where the gold used in their jewelry came from, in order to refrain from inadvertently supporting regimes or mining methods they may find objectionable.
According to a Press of Atlantic City report, these groups even have a name for the gold jewelry in question – "dirty gold” – which is a term used to describe gold mined in an ecologically irresponsible way that can sometimes produce up to 20 tons of mine waste, some of which is toxic. In addition to the environmental impact, gold mines fuel the civil war in the Congo and exploit indigenous people when their ancestral lands are stripped of natural resources.
Environmental groups further say the best thing consumers can do is buy recycled gold jewelry; but according to Payal Sampat, director of green group Earthworks' “No Dirty Gold” campaign, the problem is that recycled gold jewelry does not look any different from gold jewelry made with freshly mined gold. Earthworks is currently trying to create a form of certification for gold jewelry, similar to the Kimberly Process certification, which would verify the origin of gold.
In the United States, however, at least where gold is concerned, there should be no environmental or human rights abuse concern because most of the gold jewelry sold in the US is already recycled, said Harvey Rovinsky, owner of Bernie Robbins Jewelers.
Unlike diamonds, gold is not labeled as to its source, Rovinsky stated. The metal is refined into bars consisting of both new gold and unwanted jewelry people turned in for recycling, and designers buy the bars to make their pieces.
"When they buy the bar, there's no indication of its country of origin," Rovinsky said. "There's no way to tell if it's gold that was mined last month or gold that was mined in the 1800s." Consumers, he added, rarely ask where their gold jewelry came from.
