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Earth-friendly jewelry, recycled gold jewelry

My husband surprised me not long ago with a beautiful diamond and sapphire-studded wedding band to commemorate our 25th anniversary. What made the ring even more special was that it was manufactured by Brilliant Earth, an environmentally responsible jewelry company that crafts its rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces from recycled gold and earth-friendly gems.

I appreciated his thoughtfulness in more ways than one. As beautiful as jewelry is, it comes with a big environmental price tag. One gold ring generates 20 tons of mine waste. Toxic chemicals like cyanide and mercury, which are used to leach gold out of rock, pollute drinking water supplies, contaminate farmland, pollute rivers and streams, and threaten the health of workers and communities. Gold and diamond mining operations displace people from their homelands and destroy traditional livelihoods. Conflict or "blood" diamonds have helped fund devastating civil wars in Africa, leading to terrible human rights abuses and causing the deaths of millions of people. Creation of my ring contributed to none of these problems.

If you're looking for new jewelry, check out the offerings of any one of the twenty-eight retailers who have pledged to use sustainable gold, silver, diamonds and other gems. They include Tiffany, Piaget, QVC, Whitehall, Wal-Mart, JCPenney, and the Signet Group (parent company of Sterling and Kay Jewelers).

If none of these jewelers has what you want,

· Shop at antique stores, estate sales, yard sales and specialty shops where you can find quality used jewelry you can polish to look brand new.
· Buy jewelry at crafts fairs from artisans who work with locally available materials - beads, glass, stone, stainless steel, and wood.
· Wherever you buy, ask for diamonds mined in Canada, where the human rights of miners are protected and diamonds are mined under stricter environmental laws.

Online, consider:

· GreenKarat sells rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants and custom jewelry made from recycled gold. The company also lets you recycled unused or broken gold jewelry, attributing the value of the reclaimed metal to a new GreenKarat purchase.

· Earthwi se Jewelry uses gold and platinum processed from reclaimed sources to make wedding and commitment bands, pendants, and rings. The collection also features colored gemstones mined and cut with a concern for both environmental issues as well as fair-labor standards.

· Brilliant Earth jewelry features Canadian-mined diamonds in recycled gold bands, as well as other beautiful settings.

· Eco-Artware offers all kinds of baubles, including cufflinks, made from such recycled materials as typewriter keys and vintage watch parts.

· Gwen Davis' Verde collection, fashioned from recycled and organic materials like bamboo, vintage beads, and antique Swarovski crystals. Relying on a concept called "elemental design," Davis uses fire to etch unusual designs into her bracelets, rings, necklaces and earrings, then polishes them with beeswax

· Smart Glass features one-of-a-kind earrings, bracelets and necklaces made from recycled bottle glass. (I met the artist, Kathleen Plate, in the Sustainability Suite we hosted at the Sundance Film Festival and now am the proud owner of two beautiful bangle bracelets made from recycled blue and gold glass).

· Lucina's Crema saucer drop earrings are made from cream-colored tagua nuts harvested in Ecuador and hand-forged Fair Trade silver from Bali.

· Arctic Sparkle crafts elegant pendants from Fair Trade, recycled silver and gold.

For more information on the eco-impact of gold mining, see No Dirty Gold and read Gol den Rules: Making the Case for More Responsible Mining. To learn about the role diamonds play in funding wars, see Global Witness. To see more photos ofearth-friendly jewelry, stop in at the Big Green Purse blog.
safe water bottles
By now, you've heard that buying bottled water is a big eco-no-no. Only about 12% of the 10 billion bottles of water sold each year are recycled; the rest end up in our landfills. What's more, 2 gallons of fresh water are wasted for every one gallon bottled.

Twenty-five to forty percent of bottled water comes from tap water. Still, some people remain skittish about filling their own reusable bottle at the kitchen sink. If you're part of that crowd, consider the new in- line filtration bottle from WaterGeeks.

Made with food grade plastic, this 16 oz. filtered water bottle will treat up to 80 gallons of water, approximately 3 months of use under normal conditions. The filter removes chlorine, bad taste and odor, as well as a significant proportion of heavy metals, including lead, mercury, and copper. You can pop it in your car's cup holder or slide it into a standard bicycle bottle rack. Simply fill the bottle with water. The water is filtered as you drink! $12.49

If you need a bottle you can take out in the wild, WaterGeeks' hiking bottle filters out bacteria contaminates, allowing you to fill up at any ground water source. This bottle has even been certified to remove anthrax spores.

This bottle also will treat 80 gallons or 480 bottles of drinking water. $33.99

Our new book is on sale now! Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World offers 400+ pages of green shopping tips and lifestyle suggestions. If you buy it before the official sale date (Feb. 28), you'll get an additional 5% discount off Amazon's already 35% discounted price. Let me know what you think of it!

By the way, if you want to pass this information along to a friend, just click on the Forward button right below my signature.

Talk to you again soon,

 Diane's Photo
Diane MacEachern
Big Green Purse

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