Clara young explains how jewellery brands, both big and small, are making strides in reducing their carbon footprints.

Full disclosure: I’m no longer concerned about climate

change—I’m totally freaked out by it. Viruses, plagues, earthquakes, meteorites, bedbugs, Trump... I can quite effortlessly push these to the back of my self-centred brain and get on with my frivolous day. But global warming and its impacts—heat waves, wildfires, cyclones, glacial retreats and rising sea levels, CO2 toxicity—refuse to budge from my frontal lobe.

How does jewellery fit into the picture?

It turns out that the global jewellery market has a very big footprint. A single carat of traditionally mined diamond, for example, disturbs around nine square metres of land. It also reportedly requires almost 4,000 litres of water and creates more than 100 kilograms of CO2.

Recently, some of the biggest and best jewellery houses have made great strides in reducing these numbers and ensuring that the processes they use to extract precious stones cause minimal damage to the earth, the air and the human beings doing the actual extraction. For example, Cartier, in partnership with the Kering group, created an initiative last year promising net-zero emissions by 2030.

The pearl industry, too, Has made progress

These days, very few wild oyster beds are being exploited; roughly 95 per cent of the pearl market comprises cultured pearls grown in mesh bags suspended in open water on ropes. When this is done properly, it’s a good thing: The farms provide protection to other sea life, and the oysters filter enormous quantities of particulates and nitrogen out of the sea water daily, improving its quality. Kamoka, in the South Pacific, only uses electricity sourced from solar and wind power, and its farming techniques have increased the fish populations in its lagoon.

For even greater sustainability, there are other options. Take a look at the “vegan pearls” in singer Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever Pearl Bracelet or the Swarovski “vegan pearls” used in some of Vivienne Westwood’s designs. And then there are those “pearl” rings and necklaces you can have made from your very own breast milk…

Where it Comes from is key

Many boutique jewellery designers and even some larger houses, like Chopard, Tiffany & Co. and Bulgari, are now considering vintage gemstones or recycled gold and silver when sourcing their materials. Others, like Anabela Chan in the United Kingdom and Luxe.zen in Canada, source directly from collectives like Moyo Gems, a Tanzanian-based project that champions female artisanal miners.

Still others, such as just revived Paris brand Oscar Massin, are turning to labgrown diamonds.

Lab-grown diamonds

Contrary to popular belief, lab-grown diamonds (also called synthetic, manufactured, manmade or cultured diamonds) are not fake. They are physically and chemically identical to diamonds mined from the earth. Both are made from carbon. The main difference is that mined diamonds were formed about 150 kilometres beneath the earth’s surface and are between one and three billion years old while lab-grown diamonds can be formed in a matter of weeks.

The two main manufacturing processes used to create lab-grown diamonds are high pressure high temperature (HPHT) and chemical vapour deposition (CVD). Both produce cuttable gems in a variety of colours: clear white, yellow, orange, pink, brown, blue and green. HPHT uses an industrial press to mimic the ultra-high pressures that natural diamonds undergo during their development. A diamond seed is placed into a carbon material and then exposed to temperatures of up to 1600°C and pressures exceeding 61,000 kilograms per square centimetre. The carbon melts around the seed, and crystallization starts. After a few weeks, the stone is cooled and sent to the cutter. This process requires too many energy-hungry machines for it to be considered carbon-friendly. CVD, on the other hand, shows great promise—mainly because it doesn’t require such extreme pressures or high temperatures. With this process, a thin slice of diamond seed is placed in a sealed chamber filled with a high-carbon gas like methane and cooked to temperatures between 900 and 1200°C. The gas is broken down by microwaves (or another energy source), causing the pure carbon to adhere to and crystallize on the diamond seed. CVD still requires an excess of energy to produce a diamond, though. Lab-grown diamonds may be more sustainable, but they’re still a long way from being guilt-free, zero-carbon or carbon-negative bling.

some diamond manufacturers are reaching for the sky

New York-based diamond manufacturer Aether produces “positive-impact” diamonds from the very stuff that’s killing our planet: CO2 air pollution. The technology it uses is top secret: Direct-capture collectors scrub the air and collect CO2 in special filters, where it’s converted into methane, put into a reactor and, in about three weeks, alchemized into a diamond that is then cut, polished and set in one of Aether’s jewellery creations. The process uses half the energy of traditional mining practices, none of which is sourced from fossil fuels. Aether’s carbon footprint is reduced to zero through offsets. And the company says that for every one-carat diamond it sells, 20 metric tonnes of CO2 are removed from the atmosphere.

Skydiamond, founded by British vegan entrepreneur Dale Vince (who also created greenenergy company Ecotricity), goes one further. It, too, captures CO2 directly from the atmosphere to create its diamonds, but it uses wind and solar electricity and the water it requires is collected from rainfall.

so, good news, right?

It’s at least good to know that there are sustainable options, that the jewellery industry is moving in the right direction and that, as consumers, we obviously do have some clout. The roughly $300 billion a year jewellery game isn’t going green just because it’s the right thing to do; it’s doing it because we really want and need it to change.

Clara Young 解释了大大小小的珠宝品牌如何在减少碳足迹方面取得长足进步。 完全披露：我不再担心气候 改变——我完全被它吓坏了。病毒，瘟疫，地震，陨石，臭虫，特朗普...我可以毫不费力地把这些推到我以自我为中心的大脑后面，继续我无聊的一天。但全球变暖及其影响 - 热浪，野火，旋风，冰川退缩和海平面上升，CO2毒性 - 拒绝从我的额叶上让步。 珠宝如何融入这幅画？ 事实证明，全球珠宝市场有着非常大的足迹。例如，一克拉传统开采的钻石会扰乱大约 9 平方米的土地。据报道，它还需要近4，000升水，并产生超过100公斤的二氧化碳。 最近，一些最大和最好的珠宝公司在减少这些数字方面取得了长足的进步，并确保他们用于提取宝石的过程对地球，空气和实际提取的人类造成的损害最小。例如，卡地亚与开云集团合作，去年发起了一项倡议，承诺到2030年实现净零排放。 珍珠行业也取得了进步 如今，很少有野生牡蛎养殖场被开发。大约 95% 的珍珠市场包括养殖珍珠，这些珍珠是用网袋种植的，悬挂在绳子上的开阔水域中。如果做得好，这是一件好事：养殖场为其他海洋生物提供保护，牡蛎每天从海水中过滤出大量的颗粒物和氮气，提高其质量。南太平洋的Kamoka仅使用来自太阳能和风能的电力，其养殖技术增加了泻湖中的鱼类种群。 为了获得更大的可持续性，还有其他选择。看看歌手Billie Eilish的"Happier Than Ever Pearl手镯"中的"纯素珍珠"，或者Vivienne Westwood的一些设计中使用的施华洛世奇"纯素珍珠"。还有那些"珍珠"戒指和项链，你可以用自己的母乳制作...... 它来自哪里是关键 许多精品珠宝设计师，甚至一些较大的品牌，如萧邦、蒂芙尼公司和宝格丽，现在在采购材料时都在考虑复古宝石或回收的金银。其他项目，如英国的Anabela Chan和加拿大的Luxe.zen，直接来自Moyo Gems等集体，Moyo Gems是坦桑尼亚的一个支持女性手工采矿者的项目。 还有一些钻石，比如刚刚复兴的巴黎品牌奥斯卡·马辛（Oscar Massin），正在转向实验室培育的钻石。

实验室制造钻石 与普遍的看法相反，实验室制造的钻石（也称为合成、制造、人造或养殖钻石）不是假的。它们在物理和化学上与从地球上开采的钻石相同。两者都是由碳制成的。主要区别在于，开采的钻石是在地球表面以下约 150 公里处形成的，其历史在 10 亿到 30 亿年之间，而实验室制造的钻石可以在几周内形成。 用于制造实验室制造钻石的两种主要制造工艺是高压高温 （HPHT） 和化学气相沉积 （CVD）。两者都生产各种颜色的可切割宝石：透明白色、黄色、橙色、粉红色、棕色、蓝色和绿色。高温高压 （HPHT） 使用工业压榨机来模拟天然钻石在发育过程中承受的超高压。将钻石种子放入碳材料中，然后暴露在高达1600°C的温度和超过每平方厘米61，000公斤的压力下。碳在种子周围熔化，开始结晶。几周后，宝石被冷却并送到切磨机上。这个过程需要太多耗能的机器才能被认为是碳友好的。另一方面，CVD显示出巨大的前景 - 主要是因为它不需要这样的极端压力或高温。通过这个过程，将一片薄薄的钻石种子放入一个充满甲烷等高碳气体的密封室中，并煮至900至1200°C的温度。 气体被微波（或其他能源）分解，导致纯碳粘附在钻石种子上并结晶。然而，CVD仍然需要过量的能量来生产钻石。实验室制造的钻石可能更具可持续性，但它们距离无罪、零碳或负碳的金光闪闪还有很长的路要走。 一些钻石制造商正在向天空伸出援手 总部位于纽约的钻石制造商以太（Aether）生产"积极影响"的钻石，其来源正是杀死我们星球的东西：二氧化碳空气污染。它使用的技术是最高机密：直接捕获收集器擦洗空气并将CO2收集到特殊的过滤器中，在那里将其转化为甲烷，放入反应器中，并在大约三周内炼金成钻石，然后将其切割，抛光并镶嵌在Aether的珠宝创作之一中。该过程使用的能源是传统采矿实践的一半，其中没有一个来自化石燃料。通过抵消，以太的碳足迹减少到零。该公司表示，每销售一克拉钻石，就会从大气中去除 20 公吨的二氧化碳。

Skydiamond由英国素食企业家Dale Vince创立（他还创建了绿色能源公司Ecotricity），更进一步。它也直接从大气中捕获二氧化碳以产生钻石，但它使用风能和太阳能，并且它所需的水是从降雨中收集的。 所以，好消息，对吧？ 至少应该知道有可持续的选择，珠宝行业正朝着正确的方向发展，作为消费者，我们显然确实有一些影响力。每年约3000亿美元的珠宝游戏不会仅仅因为这是正确的事情而走向绿色;它之所以这样做，是因为我们真的想要并且需要它来改变。