As part of our commitment to environment responsibility, we use recycled precious metals in the creation of 99% of our jewelry, guaranteeing our customers ethical and eco-friendly jewelry of the highest quality.

Gold mining has long been considered the world's most polluting industry. WorldWatch Institute estimates that the gold produced for a single .33-ounce, 18-karat gold ring generates 18 tons of mine waste, including arsenic, cyanide and mercury, which pollute groundwater and kill wildlife.

The impacts of traditional gold mining are great. For example:

Metals mining is the most toxic polluter in the United States. It is responsible for 96 percent of arsenic emissions and 76 percent of lead emissions. But this problem stretches far beyond the borders of the U.S.A. A tragic example is the the Peruvian town of La Oroya: the production site of gold bullion for the US-based Doe Run Corporation, a study by the Peruvian Ministry of Health revealed that 99 percent of the children have severe lead poisoning, and 20 percent of these children needed urgent hospitalization.

Each year in the United States, mines generate an amount of waste equivalent in weight to nearly nine times the trash produced by all its cities and towns combined. A single gold ring leaves in its wake at least 18 tons of mine waste.

Accidents throughout the world involving cyanide-laced mine wastes have caused fish kills, severe water pollution, and soil contamination.

Large scale mining operations often devastate local economies, cause illnesses, destroy streams and water supplies, and lead to human rights abuses.

Metal mining employs only .09 percent of the global workforce but consumes as much as 10 percent of world energy.

Approximately half the gold produced worldwide has or will come from indigenous peoples' lands.

Our company uses precious metals from renewed sources derived from recycled jewelry or industrial products. The precious metals are reclaimed and then re-refined to produce gold and platinum of identical quality to newly mined metals. By using renewed metals, our goal is to reduce the need for additional dirty gold mining.

By using recycled metals, we decrease the global demand for newly mined gold and diminish the environmentally and socially destructive effects of dirty gold and other metal mining practices. Because precious metals can be recycled repeatedly with no degradation in quality, they are a naturally renewable resource.

Look for the "100% recycled" icon for those items that we guarantee to be made of 100% recycled and eco-friendly precious metals.