In the past five or six years, jewellery businesses have woken up to the fact that they need to be more sustainable to be relevant to today’s markets, says Assheton Carter, vice-president for corporate community engagement at Washington-based non-governmental organisation, Pact. “Jewellers are quite sensitive to campaigns such as No Dirty Gold that touch on the sensibilities of their consumers.”
The ethical practices that the diamond industry has been obliged to apply are steadily being extended to the gold industry. Tiffany & Co, for instance, recently shifted its supply chain so that it sources most of its new gold from the Bingham Canyon mine in Utah, a new and modern mine where it can ensure full control of procedures.
