128: Jewellery - The unshiny truth with Marc Choyt

Have you ever thought about where your jewellery came from? Maybe from one of the big name classics, maybe from the local hand made jeweller at the markets. Have you ever thought about whether THEY know where their materials come from? Unfortunately “shiny and sparkly” are words that don’t come to mind when I chat to today’s guest, Marc Choy, the only ethical, fairtrade gold jeweller in the USA and president of the Fair Jewellery Action Group. He wrote an expose called: Ethical Jewelry Expose: Lies, Damn Lies and Conflict Free Diamonds that we found when we were wanting to do a show on Jewellery and it is seriously confronting to learn that “Conflict free” doesn’t, unfortunately, mean all that it conjures. Please don’t feel riddled with guilt for what you didn’t know yesterday, once you listen to today’s show. Feel excited about what you’re going to change from now and I’ve challenged us all to find ethical, fairtrade jewellers in our local area and share them as resources for the community in today’s show notes. Enjoy the show and as always, all further resources are in today’s show notes over at lowtoxlife.com/podcast

And here are the questions I asked Marc:

Your journey into discovering that jewellery wasn't all that glitters and had a very dark side. Were you already conscious of food system injustice / environmental toxins or was this your gateway into conscious, aware choices. Share how you and your wife made the foray into ethical jewellery? From what I understand there are a few factors at play in jewellery - It's not just the fairtrade aspects of the workforce / small scale miners it's also mining methods and processing that can be very high tox... other factors? Let's start with diamonds (I too want to share a personal story about the effects of the film Blood Diamond) - What do we need to be aware of in terms of where we've come from in the history of diamond mining and trade? And gold - I've heard you talk about how it can be a toxic process - can you talk us through it? *Let's add in anything else about the process of procurement here before continuing. Can discuss before we hit record* So how did you go about becoming certified fairtrade - ONLY fairtrade certified gold jeweller in the USA might I add? What challenges did you run into as you went about establishing the supply chain? How can we be better at sourcing jewellery / good questions we can ask when we're in a jewellery shop so that we start to raise awareness and let jewellers everywhere know that we want to know we're not hurting people/planet with our jewellery choices? Are there any 'greenwash' labels/associations used in Jewellery that are similar to "All natural" and "Sustainable Palm" labels that often are quite far from what they sound like in fairness and toxicity? And if we have time I'd love to chat about your work with Native Americans and what we can all learn from their cultural, spiritual wisdom and bring into our modern lives?