By Lisa Elser

A gem cutter walks into an operating room…Well, she was rolled in, actually. This was for surgery late last year. I have some issues with sedation, so I was fully conscious for the procedure with only a spinal block. There I was, a disembodied head, losing an organ on the other side of the drape, when the anesthetist pulls over his med student and says:

“You’re a gem cutter, right? This guy just got engaged. Can you explain the difference between lab-grown and natural diamonds?”

For the next half hour, I lectured about lab versus natural, ethical sourcing, environmental issues, and all sorts of other things, as more and more of the circulating team came around to my side. It’s the only talk I’ve ever given without using my hands.

This was a big wake up call for me. I make my living buying, cutting, and selling gems. I travel to gem-producing countries and have a network of suppliers all over the world. When I look at a piece of rough, my first thought is whether it would be a good business investment. My trade clients look at my gems the same way, asking, “Can this be sold for a profit?”

Sure, we know these things are pretty—most of us wouldn’t be in this business if we didn’t love gems and jewellery. That said, it can be easy to lose perspective between the literal grind of cutting (and the drudgery of paperwork and running a business) and the glimpses of the darker side of this trade we are involved in. 

When we are immersed in this world day in and day out, it can be easy for us to lose sight of how compelling our retail customers find the material. Not only are the gems themselves intrinsically appealing, but plenty of folks are also fascinated by the nuances and ethics around mining and the supply chain—enough to start a conversation with a patient actively undergoing surgery!

I’m a small-business person, buying from and selling to other small-business people. Many of the ethical supply chain options available to large firms (such as buying the entire output of a mine, for instance) are not feasible for businesses like mine. Nevertheless, there are ways to reflect our ethics in our businesses. In this article, I will describe a few approaches to ethical sourcing which I have observed over my career, then outline the benefits and drawbacks to each.

1) Doing nothing (“If it ain’t broke…”)

We all have our long-standing preferred suppliers, and change is hard. However, more and more customers are coming in asking about provenance and ethical sourcing for metals and gemstones. If we don’t have a good answer for how we are working to be more aware and engaged with ethical sourcing, we will inevitably lose customers.

2) Greenwashing

In early 2023, Jeffrey Bilgore published an article for the American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) discussing responsible sourcing, and he nailed it.¹ “Greenwashing” is when someone creates the illusion of doing good things while doing little to nothing to virtue-signal without substance. Some gem cutters and sellers have done things like set up vanity charities, benefiting from a tax write-off without necessarily helping people in gem-producing countries in a meaningful way beyond some feel-good public relations move.

Further, Bilgore describes “poverty tourism,” whereby people pay big money to visit mines and a school or two in Tanzania and Kenya. Of course, while these travellers get their photo op, there is no good way to know how much (if any) of the money spent goes to help anyone but the organizers.

It can be exceptionally hard to figure out what’s real and what’s greenwashed. Personally, I avoid anything that centres North Americans as heroes—it’s reached the point where, if a western gem cutter or dealer starts a non-profit organization, I’m immediately skeptical.

3) Synthetics

Lab-grown diamond companies as well as the manufacturers and cutters of other synthetic gemstones, often make claims about how their pieces are environmentally friendly. Indeed, the narrative is appealing—the products are lower cost, and the claims are mostly true. Of course, lab-created gems still require mined minerals and electricity to make, so they are not impact-neutral, but there is often less impact compared to their natural counterparts.

On the other side of the equation, though, natural gems provide income to artisanal miners and help the economies of gem-producing countries. Eliminating natural gems from the supply chain would deprive many millions of people of a livelihood.²

Still, synthetics can be a great choice to offer clients (especially if the stones are cut by precision cutters) and provide us with a way to answer some of our supply chain questions with high quality, beautiful gems.

4) Large ethical suppliers (i.e. end-to-end ownership/traceability)

There are larger gem dealers able to operate end-to-end supply chains. For example, Columbia House (United States) buys the entire output of a mine, manages the cutting in factories overseas, and then sells to jewellers. This allows the firm to directly control all aspects of safety, environmental impact, working conditions, and so forth. If the wholesaler has what you want, it is a great resource for coloured gems.

While blockchain and traceability are becoming more common with larger dealers, this does not offer information about working conditions. You can take comfort in knowing where the gems have been, but you do not know if the miners and cutters were paid fairly and had safe working conditions, or whether the environmental impact of mining was properly mitigated.

While methods of end-to-end ownership and end-to-end traceability are good ideas, they may also shut out small suppliers all along the chain and dissuade
any competition.

5) Small ethical suppliers (i.e. traceability
to the individual)

Having bought for years on the ground in gem-producing countries, it is clear to me we almost never know who exactly mined our gems—not even if the marketing tells you we do. Things move around. Someone will pass rough to a broker who speaks better English or has better connections. If that broker doesn’t sell it, they’ll pass it to another broker who might have different clients. I have seen the same parcel from four or five different sellers, all of whom had a story about who mined it.

In truth, parcels often are assembled from the output of different mines. For instance, all the two- to three-gram high-grade rhodolite will get consolidated into the same bag, regardless of who mined them and where.

Firms like Nineteen48 and Moyo Gems are raising awareness of individual miners among jewellers and clients. I respect what they’re doing and hope they thrive. While there seems to be a good market for this level of transparency, personally, as a gem cutter, most of the gems offered are of a lower grade than I want to cut, as the output is necessarily limited when buying from very small-scale miners.

6) Dedicated donations

This is the route I have taken with my own business. As a small business buying rough gems to cut and sell at a premium, I cannot afford to buy lower-end goods, nor can I buy the output of a mine to pick only the top grade. I am simply unable to control the supply chain at that level.

Instead, I have selected charities located within gem-producing countries (ideally in gem-producing communities), and I donate a set percentage of my net profit. My little business has sponsored wells, medical equipment, and educational opportunities. I choose organizations founded in Tanzania and Sri Lanka, and I donate directly. We don’t need an American or Canadian charity to funnel our money to the people who need it—there are plenty of excellent places doing excellent work, run by local people.

For me, and probably for most small businesses, this is the most flexible way to apply our ethics to coloured gems. While I still choose my suppliers carefully (doing my reasonably best job to ensure those people are ethical themselves), charitable donations enable me to offer a wide variety of gems to my clients without being constrained by what’s available from suppliers with full traceability.

I also firmly believe that by supporting locally run education and health care initiatives, I am doing “real” good in ways I cannot do directly—in places I don’t live and in languages I don’t speak.

The feedback from both my retail and wholesale clients has been incredibly positive. Much like the medical team who performed my aforementioned surgery, they love hearing about the efforts their purchases help support.

Picking a path forward

People want to feel good about what they buy, but often feel confused because there is so much conflicting information. We need ways to accurately educate, clarify, and set evidence-based expectations, as this ensures we and our clients feel good about our gems. 

Of course, how exactly we approach ethical gem trading is going to be specific to each person or each company. We sound most sincere when we are truly sincere! Rather than opting to do nothing or greenwashing, your path might include a combination of synthetics, suppliers, and donations to a range of charitable causes. Start small, accept the imperfections in the process, consider what feels most authentic to you, and see what resonates best with your clients. 

References

¹ See “Responsible Sourcing, Supply Chain Practices, Traceability & the Ethics of Greenwashing” by Jeffrey Bilgore: https://agta.org/from-prism-volume-1-2023-member-opinion-letter-from-jeffrey-bilgore

² See “International Group Sets Sights on Sustainable Gemstone Mining” by Russell Shor: https://www.gia.edu/gia-news-research-international-group-sets-sights-sustainable-gemstone-mining

Lisa Elser is a professional gem cutter and owner of Custom Cut Gems in Vancouver. She trained in Switzerland after a career in IT consulting with some of the largest banks and insurance companies in the world. Elser and her husband travel the world to buy rough gems, working to ensure the stones purchased are ethically mined and benefit local communities. In 2013, she won an American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) Spectrum Award for her 14.24-carat Nigerian tourmaline, which is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution. Elser can be contacted at lelser@lisaelser.com.