Marc initiated a successful campaign to protect these Ortiz mountains from a gold mine pit that would be 1200 feet deep, four stories high and over half a mile wide. He continues this work today to work with local business leaders to protect the ecology around Santa Fe.
Creating a More Fair, Just, and Sustainable Future
We are an activist jewelry company, and Santa Fe NM Green Business of the Year 2019. We’ve been promoting and campaigning for social and environmental justice, both in the jewelry sector and in our local community, for over fifteen years.
Globally, we want to build a strong Fairtrade Gold movement in the US— one that will uplift thousands of small-scale miners from poverty and exploitation, while reducing global mercury contamination.
While there are over 250 Fairtrade Gold jewelers in the UK alone, we have been the only one in the US since April, 2015. Fairtrade Gold is the most powerful and transformative movement in the jewelry sector, which is part of the reason why it has received so little support in the US.
In 2017 we initiated our Giving 20% Back campaign. We collaborate with a number of wonderful nonprofits, offering their organizations 20% of our sales from members of their communities. In return, these organizations let their members know about our efforts to build a strong Fairtrade Gold movement in North America.
Here’s a list of the organizations.
Advocacy
Our President, Marc Choyt, has been at the forefront of ethical sourcing in the jewelry sector for fifteen years. He initiated the first ever ethical jewelry blog in 2006, which evolved into Fair Jewelry Action, a human rights and environmental justice network.
Marc has acted as a trade watchdog, a freelance writer for trade magazines and business publications, appeared on numerous podcasts, and campaigned for Indigenous miners' rights. He recently authored The Ethical Jewelry Exposé: Lies, Damn Lies and Conflict Free Diamonds, a 45,000 word journalistic investigation available online as an open source document.
In Santa Fe, where he has lived for over thirty years, Marc has worked as an anti-mining activist, leading the Stop Santa Fe Gold campaign. Between 2016 and 2019, he assisted with the development and passage of Santa Fe County’s Mining ordinances which is one of our strongest defenses against new proposed mine in the Pecos.