Ethic

[anna_ip]

I would like to have a thread about ethic/green/fair-trade/ecologic.
Where to find ethic metall supplier, tips how to make your workshop more green, to discuss things that happened in the mining buisness etc.?!

[mochiandmocha]

Mocha and I DEFINITELTY agree on this one! And that could include how you can make sure that no animal products have been used, etc. (we're vegans, so we make our jewellery vegan, too!)
Good one, anna-ip!! ^_^

[Solunar Silver Studio]

I'd love to know what vegan jewellery is! I've racked my brains (or rather poked my flaccid little brain cell ) and just can't come up with anything....

[mochiandmocha]

Well...vegan jewellery is just like vegan chocolate, or vegan clothes, or vegan shoes: made without using animal products ^_^
For shoes, we tend to go for the recycled car tyre (more and more popular on vegan shoes websites) instead of leather; for chocolate, well... it's so much healthier with no animal fat; and for jewellery we just make sure that we don't use things like leather/wool etc in our workshop!^_^ And since we ourselves don't eat or use animal products in our personal lives, our jewellery is vegan!

Seriously, being vegan is a major step that people can take to help the environment. Without trying to do any propaganda, I think anyone interested should go have a look at the vegan society website as it clearly explains why eating animals has such a devastating impact on our planet...
Home - Vegan Society

Animal Aid's website is also great:
Animal Aid: Veggie & Vegan

I hope this answers your question!
See ya!

[geti-titanium]

For shoes, we tend to go for the recycled car tyre

Aren't car tyres made from rubber, which is made from oil, which is made over millions of years from tiny plants and animals, called plankton?

[Green Monster]

going to get some popcorn, a fizzy drink, and a comfy seat......................ok, go for it

[Jayne]

Aren't car tyres made from rubber, which is made from oil, which is made over millions of years from tiny plants and animals, called plankton?

yeah, but, we don't care about plankton cos it doesn't have fluffy wuffy fur & big eyes.
I mean, when was the last time that you went to the animal rescue centre to find a jar of plankton waiting for adoption?????
J x

[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>