Ethic

[Jayne]

I've turned off my pickling unit

[SilverBlueberry]

I've thought about this too. So far I've bought stones from anywhere but it doesn't always feel right. I don't know anything about where they come from.

I did read somewhere that metal clay is recycled silver. Don't know if it's true but I want it to be!

I would also like to have recycled jewelry boxes but I can't find them easily in Sweden.

[Solunar Silver Studio]

Ooooo - you're going to like this!!! Recycled Fine Silver - Is Your Jewelry Green?

[ps_bond]

If you want to be environmentally sound, don't make jewellery at all.

Seriously.

Recycled metals require a variety of chemicals to refine and reuse them - not least of which are conc. nitric and hydrochloric acids, all with their own disposal problems. Yes, the gold mines use cyanide for leaching - but cyanide is naturally occurring, nitric acid isn't.

Pickling with citric acid because it's natural; great - but you're creating copper citrate instead of sulphate. Not a good compound to have knocking around in environmental terms (although I'd point out that sulphurous acid is another naturally occurring one, so the citric being natural is a bit of a red herring).

Gems - well, they're all exploiting the natural world, aren't they? And it's no use saying "oh, but these are reused" - by using them you're encouraging the trade in gemstones, be they mined or recycled. Lab grown - another "nasty" industrial process...

All soldering torches - either they use hydrocarbon gases producing CO2 or (in the case of the water torches) electricity, predominantly from inefficient power stations. What about the manufacturing processes for the other tools?

All of these things require transportation.

What does that leave? Wood? So long as you've dealt with harvesting it yourself...?

Fundamentally, if you're here, you're affecting the environment. There's only one way to improve that.

Frankly, I'm more than a bit tired of superficial claims of "eco-friendly" being made to justify some blinkered stance - "electric cars" (appalling environmental costs in manufacturing, refuelled by coal power stations); "energy saving lightbulbs" (with more mercury in them than the banned thermometers had); recycling waste (which gets shipped half the world away to be burned in an environmental disaster) - and as for this asinine "carbon tax" drivel... Well. The only relevant word there is "tax".

Make your choices from an informed standpoint. To thine own self be true, but don't take a holier-than-thou attitude about it.

</cynic> </rant>

[anna_ip]

is is a box company that sell recycled boxes in UK. tinyboxcompany.co.uk

[SilverBlueberry]

Peter, I sort of agree with you, but there are many things that Can become better. Maybe large companies that buy gemstones directly from mines could use their money power to improve working conditions in the mines. I would be much happier buying gemstones that are fair trade, than being in the dark about everything around their production.

Many chemicals used in the precious metals industry can be recycled, and the waste doesn't need to be huge. It's just sad that there is so little fair trade and/or environmental movement in the jewelry world.

[SilverBlueberry]

Tinybox: nice but I don't see any shipping beyond the UK. Sigh.

[mochiandmocha]

Advospovap, is that "hey" of yours
-organic?
-fairtrade?
-cruelty-free?
-are the h, e and y post-consumer recycled, i.e copied and pasted from an old email?

If that's the case yup, you're in the right section! Welcome on the forum!