By Ronit Scheyer

The jewelry supply chain, from mine to market, is long and arduous. With so many complex twists and turns, it is hardly surprising that people have little idea about the provenance of their jewelry, including where it came from and how it was made.

For example, when it comes down to it, would a consumer actually know whether their diamond ring was made with gold and gems mined with respect to the surrounding environment, including wildlife and plant life? Would they be able to find out if it was made by workers whose human rights were being upheld, who were making a living wage and who had access to healthcare and medical treatment?  If they wanted to know, would they be able to find out?

Marc Choyt, co-owner of New Mexico-based jewelry design company Reflective Images, is taking a small step to make sure ethically conscious consumers who want to know where their jewelry came from and what kind of process it went through to get to them can find out. The company recently created and launched the FRE System on their website www.celticjewelry.com. FRE stands for Fair labor, social Responsibility and Ecological impact.

The FRE System consists of a clickable tab located on the page of every item of jewelry the company sells. Clicking on the FRE tab opens up a window that details what the item is made of and exactly where its components came from. In other words, it describes the supply chain that brought the gold, silver and gemstones from their original sources to the jewelry shop. The system allows a jewelry company with a complex inventory to be transparent about the sources of their materials, something the increasingly green and eco-conscious consumer may find very refreshing.

“It is a marketing approach based on connecting sourcing to purchasing,” Choyt says, “so that people can make their own ethical decisions rather than being told that the piece is ‘ethical’…With the FRE System, someone can say, ‘this is an ethical company,’ or ‘I don’t think this company is doing enough.’ I give them the information to make their own assessment.”

While the FRE System describes the origin of the company’s jewelry materials, some hurdles need to be crossed before it will be able to paint a comprehensive picture. For example, the company has been unable to trace the origin of its gemstones because a monitored supply chain does not exist. Most of the company’s gemstones come finished from India, but, currently, they are unable to detail how the stones are cut or processed or where they were initially mined.

This lacuna raises some issues. Choyt says that most gemstones are extracted by artisanal miners, and it is unknown whether or not they receive a living wage for their work; in fact, most probably do not. “Artisanal and small scale mining today employs [an] estimated 11 to 13 million people,” according to the Association for Responsible Mining.  “Although, according to the International Labor Organization, between 80 and 100 million depend on it as part of their diversified or seasonal livelihood strategies for survival.”

This means that the vast majority of those who depend on artisanal mining for their livelihood are not formally employed and have no guarantee of their basic human rights being upheld. Those who are employed are often paid a low price for their gems by middle people, according to Choyt, who then sell the gems to jewelers.

While the company has no intention of marketing the software to other jewelers in the industry at the moment, the FRE System is an open source and is offered under community software licensing. This means that anyone can use it, modify it and make their own version without any cost.  The only requirement is that they include a reference to Reflective Images as the originator of the idea.

Fortunately, Choyt is not alone in his fight to create a more transparent jewelry industry. Last fall, the first installment of the Madison Dialogue Ethical Jewelry Summit was held in New York City. The Madison Dialogue is a cross-sector initiative, established in 2006 to promote communication and collaboration among commercial entities, civil society groups and others, with the aim of encouraging best practices, sustainable economic development and verified sources of responsible gold, diamonds and gemstones.

Participants, who include Earthworks, the World Wildlife Fund, Partnership Africa Canada, Tiffany & Co. Foundation, and Jewelers of America, are working on a number of initiatives to address these issues, such as the Kimberley Process, the Diamond Development Initiative, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance and efforts to certify fair-trade gold, diamonds and other minerals.

Although the different jewelry industry sectors involved in the Madison Dialogue have been working together since 2006, the October 2007 event was the first time they had met face-to-face. Convening to discuss ethical jewelry and small-scale mining issues, the conference attendees agreed to form working groups to discuss such key topics as the development of principles, standards and a third-party assurance system for jewelry products that may be labeled as “ethical” or “fair trade;” interactions between large- and small-scale mining; artisanal and small-scale metals, colored gemstone and diamond mining and recycled metals.

In the context of the Madison Dialogue and the larger, industry-wide effort that it represents, Jewelers of America Director of Public Affairs Peggy Jo Donahue commented on the launch of Reflective Images’ initiative, “I think the FRE System is one very creative solution to a real dilemma at present – how does a retailer reassure its customers that it sells products sourced in ethically, socially and environmentally responsible ways?”

According to Donahue, the system is an example of how some jewelers are taking matters into their own hands. “It’s a first step,” in a very long road, she asserts. “But, as the internationally respected experts who spoke at the Madison Dialogue Summit agreed – no system will gain the respect of consumers, human rights groups and others who criticize our industry – unless the responsible practices a retailer cites are widely agreed upon and assured by an objective third party.”

As part of the development of the FRE System, Choyt has also developed an FRE Handbook, containing background and contemporary information about the need for more third-party oversight in the development of a system for sourcing free-trade jewelry. It is meant to be a resource book for those seeking to know more about the process and its contemporary issues, as well as a source of templates and ideas as to how an interested company could implement the system themselves.

By using only recycled gold and partially recycled silver, as well as the launch of the FRE System, among their host of environmentally friendly actions, Reflective Images is positioning itself to tap into a growing green market potential. “Consumers – especially the young generation in line to buy engagement rings – are extremely concerned about the provenance of all their products,” says Donahue.  “They’ve grown up buying fair trade coffee and wondering about working conditions in the factories where their clothes are sewn. Is it any wonder they are worrying about their jewelry products, too?”