Marc Choyt
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Jun 22, 2022
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
Honestly, a small-scale gold miner in Kenya or Peru could not care less about an “ethical” recycled gold wedding ring shipped to you in a recycled paper or wooden box. This ring has zero impact on their lives, and by choosing it over a Fairtrade Gold wedding ring, you are essentially supporting the status quo.
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Marc Choyt
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Sep 18, 2020
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
When a Native American Pueblo elder who I’m close to told me about how his grandmother was enslaved at a mine run by the Spanish, I recalled a report by about Rio Tinto by the London Mining network which described a mine being run under “virtual slave labor.”
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Marc Choyt
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Sep 18, 2020
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
What’s particularly tricky is the present moment. In personal relationships and negotiations, small signs of bad faith can be easily bypassed by the optimism of the possible. It’s hard to see the shadowy movement on the peripheral of your vision just as daylight is swallowed by the night, especially over a glass of fine wine.
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Marc Choyt
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Sep 18, 2020
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
How about certified Council member Newmont Mining Corporation, the second-largest gold producer in the world? They allegedly illegally seized land from indigenous people in Peru, as determined by Peruvian courts, in order to create a five-billion dollar gold mine.
Yet I see no evidence that this incident was investigated under the Council ’s code of conduct.
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Marc Choyt
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Sep 18, 2020
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
In 2010, De Beers was accused of looting diamonds from Zimbabwe. This claim was repeated again as outlined in this 2016 article from the Zimbabwe Independent: “De Beers looted our diamonds for 15 years and were sending them to South Africa without our knowledge and they had even declared that area a restricted area, as if it was their land when the country belongs to us” states Obert Mpofu, Zimbab
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Marc Choyt
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Sep 18, 2020
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
In other words, the Council is set up to seem like the Marine and Forest Council’s inviting a wide range of parties to the table.
But ultimately, the Council is a trade organization.
This kind of specious reasoning—to emphasize one truth to hide a larger, more important truth, is a common theme in our exploration.
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Marc Choyt
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Aug 24, 2020
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
The irony is thick. With the Diamond Development Initiative, De Beers creates a monopoly on the new frontier of ethical diamonds: the traceable small-scale sector, the very sector that that they controlled during the ‘80s when millions were being killed.
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Marc Choyt
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Mar 17, 2020
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
The difference between Fairtrade Gold and dirty gold runs deep. Let this handy infographic be your guide! Each link sends you to a short article explaining the aspect in question in a bit more detail. #NoDirtyGold
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Marc Choyt
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Jan 21, 2020
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
The other individual told me of a conversation that took place on a flight while sitting next to the CEO of a major supplier, widely revered as an excellent source by ethical jewelers. The CEO extolled views of workers straight out of apartheid South Africa, circa 1948: hire miners known to have AIDS, because they are more easily disposable.
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Marc Choyt
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Jan 21, 2020
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Ethical Jewelry Expose
It never mattered much to the mainstream trade that, as this article in Foreign Policy points out, up to 30% of all diamonds come from the black market, a KPSC certificate is as easy to forge as an old driver’s license, or that diamond cutting is often done with child labor.
The “conflict free” narrative took care of all that.
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