Fair Trade Jewelry Practices


Wedding Rings


(Some of Helen's Wedding ring designs)
The intent of fair trade is to create beneficial economic relationships between producers in developing nations and consumers in developed nations. Fair trade translates to transparent, ethical labor and environmentally responsible sourcing. In our business, fair trade jewelry authentically supports artisan mining communities who are often living in very poor regions. It is also produced from artisanal crafts people and manufacturers.

Artisan production is particularly important for wedding rings because jewelry carries the energy of its maker embedded in its highly symbolic meaning. A wedding ring that is generically dye struck from a machine will carry the energy of how it was created.

Our artisan designer rings, created with great skill, are worthy of representing your most noble sentiments. As they are made by American artisans, they can not be considered "fair trade." However, many of the gemstones we offer support producer communities in the developing world.

Fair Trade Gemstones


In an ideal world, a fair trade gem would come from a third party certified, cooperative mining community. Beneficiation, including polishing and community development, would be based in and benefit local economies. This situation simply does not exist. Instead, we source our gems from companies that fall into three different models for the emerging for fair trade market: Co-ops, Companies, and Collaborators.

For more detailed info, visit our Fair Trade Gem Section.

Fair Trade Diamonds

A universally accepted definition of what constitutes a fair trade diamond has yet to be established, even though studies have been conducted. The critical issue is who will benefit from this labeling: large or small scale producers?


In our view, fair trade diamonds should be restricted only to those diamonds that are sourced from small community based, artisanal miners; and then, polished in those communities. Only such projects, independent of international corporations which are beholden to shareholders, could validly produce “fair trade diamonds.”

Presently, a few of these projects are underway. But they have yet to provide product that we have access to. Therefore, the best possible option is to know where your diamonds are sourced and cut.

Fair Trade Jewelry

If you Google “fair trade jewelry,” our blog, www.fairjewelry.org, will come up number one. But after that, a number of websites that sell “fair trade jewelry.”

The network of Fair Trade organizations (IFAT) and the Fair Trade Federation (FTF) lists jewelry as a product category. In doing so, they endorse efforts of small producers who abide by fair trade principals to market themselves as “fair trade jewelry.”

Yet they do not exactly define what the making of fair trade jewelry might entail in the actual workshop. While general fair trade principals are relatively easy to define, the actual standards pose a more difficult challenge.

(Our manufacturing in Bali for other lines we produce uses recycled sterling and adheres to fair trade principals.)
If you ask companies that sell fair trade jewelry where their silver comes from, how their production facilities are ventilated, what chemicals are used in solders and fluxes and how waste products are disposed of, it is unlikely that they will be able to tell you.

In addition, jewelry and other fair trade goods are often sourced from distributors rather than directly from producers. This information is not transparently revealed.

Marc Choyt, co-owner of Reflective Images, as part of a cross sector, international initiative, is spearheading a manufacturing committee with the goal of developing and defining fair trade jewelry manufacturing guidelines and all they entail. Reflective Images is perhaps the first company in the jewelry sector that is producing jewelry internationally and nationally with recycled precious metal.

Learn about how Reflective Images defines their fair trade production for other jewelry lines that they produce.

For more info, see our article: "The Market Driven Ambiguities of Fair Trade Jewelry"

 
 
 

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