Ethical & Recycled Silver Jewellery
As a society we are finally hearing the message about the importance of recycling. Sending waste off to landfill is no longer an acceptable practice and we are beginning to find ways of reusing perfectly good materials when the original product is no longer of any use. The same can be said for silver jewellery. The availability of recycled silver jewellery is increasing and as interest in all things recycling does too, the range of products will steadily grow.
How ethical is recycled silver jewellery?
Can recycled silver jewellery itself ever be truly ethical if we’re unsure of the original source. Well, as a metal, silver is ethical in that it is rarely thrown away because the silver industry has always recycled. Silver can be easily melted down and reused many times over and therefore it is deemed ethical by the industry because of this. The ‘ethical silver’ debate therefore moves to the process of getting the metal out of the ground in the first place.
Around a third of all silver actually comes from silver mines but the majority is as a by-product of mining other metals like copper, gold and zinc. This type of mining is one of the world’s most environmentally destructive industries using an estimated 10 per cent of world energy, not to mention all the toxic emissions, landscape damage and human rights issues.
Finding ethical sources for silver is more difficult than with diamonds or gold. The supply channels are rare if almost non-existent. Eighty per cent of gold mined each year will become jewellery making it a desirable target for ethical consumer campaigns. Not so with silver. Only 25 per cent of silver will become jewellery or silverware, the rest is used in electrical products such as plasma displays and X-rays or the fabrication of solar cells.
Until certification is introduced and mines and manufacturers meet criteria for the responsible sourcing of silver, what can we do in our efforts to be ‘ethical’ about buying silver jewellery?
Buy UK produced recycled silver jewellery
While the campaigns for ethical mining gather momentum, as consumers, one of the best efforts we can make is to buy jewellery from a range produced using recycled silver from unwanted silver products that have been melted down.
We can also buy from UK suppliers who have sourced recycled silver pendants, earrings and necklaces that are handmade in this country. By doing this, we reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing and transportation and we also place less emphasis on requiring new silver from the mining process, which in turn puts pressure on the silver industry to mine in an ethical and responsible way.
Websites such as www.greentulip.co.uk have a great range of jewellery made from UK sourced recycled silver including this beautiful necklace and earrings.
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| An elegant recycled silver necklace with large matt silver heart |