Is your gold ring made from a former crown? Thanks to a unique characteristic of gold, it’s entirely possible. If your solid gold pieces are made in our New York facility, one thing is for certain: that gold is recycled!
Photo by Gary Yost on Unsplash
If you added up all the gold jewelry developed over the centuries, it would be greater than the total amount of gold mined. How? Gold is often called a naturally renewable resource. According to the World Gold Council, annual demand for gold “requires more gold than is newly mined, and the shortfall is made up from recycling.”
Melted down, gold can be reused time and again without losing its purity or value. This remarkable property means that most gold has been used – and reused – for millennia. It is estimated that only 2% of all gold ever mined from the earth is unaccounted for; much of the rest has been reused countless times.
When no longer in use, jewelry and other gold-containing materials are separated from their component parts (for example, diamonds are separated from a gold ring). The gold is melted down and refined, removing unwanted elements to leave gold in its pure form. Then it is ready for re-use.
Compared to mined gold, recycled gold uses considerably fewer resources to process, significantly reducing its environmental impact. Though recycled gold can attract a premium, the societal and environmental benefit is tremendous.
We ensure that our suppliers and partners are sustainable, transparent and ethical, meeting strict requirements and audits discussed in a recent blog post. As a result, our New York facility only uses recycled gold in solid gold pieces, and many of our suppliers and factories prefer recycled gold that reduces our impact on the environment.
Across all of our sourcing and manufacturing relationships, we continue to work to increase the usage of recycled and socially and environmentally responsible materials. We are also carefully monitoring new programs like the Artisanal Gold Council and Fairmined, which attempt to support small, social and environmentally conscious mines in response to the damage that can be done by traditional, large-scale mining efforts.
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