Stolen Shine

Gold industry still poses problems for environment and human health, but some solutions are on the way

In Tanzania, small-scale gold mine workers mix mud, gold and mercury with their bare hands in a pan that will later be used to cook dinner. When the mixture is heated to separate one from the other, the mercury evaporates, its vapors a potent neurotoxin that workers inhale. In the Congo, mining for gold and other minerals helped fund a war considered the deadliest since World War II, with an estimated 5 million casualties. And as was made readily visible in the Animas River this summer, the legacy of gold mining has left a lasting imprint on the American West that poses an ongoing threat to our waterways.

"Jewelry is really about some of the most—apart from it being about adornment—it's about some of the most noble characteristics that we have as human beings. It's about love. It's about commitment. It has talismanic value. But there's no greater gap between the sourcing of a product and the emotional meaning of a product than jewelry. And this gap, even today, is as wide as it's ever been," says Marc Choyt, president of Reflective Images Jewelry in Santa Fe.

Jewelers like Choyt, who started making responsibly sourced jewelry in 1995 with his wife, creative director Helen Chantler, say there's a way for consumers to direct a more ethical supply chain. Years ago, in the wake of Blood Diamond, the book and movie that exposed the violence fueled by the diamond industry, consumers started having those conversations, and Choyt saw in the Animas River spill a time to restart them.

Today, large-scale gold mines continue to take an inevitable toll on the environment and, often, on the workers.

"If anything, the mines we're getting gold from now are a much different scale, much bigger and in some ways have a much bigger impact," says Payal Sampat, mining program director with Earthworks, an environmental advocacy organization."These are gigantic, industrial operations that have unearthed such tremendous amounts of earth that they can be seen from outer space."

Because mining often takes place in remote, mountainous areas, it can be out of sight and out of mind, but it's still a leading polluter in the US, Sampat says, and as director of the No Dirty Gold campaign, she's working to connect consumers with alternatives for the gold in their jewelry and smartphones.

"One of the issues is that there's no way, when you walk into a jewelry store, that you actually know the antecedents of what you're buying," she says.

An estimated 90 percent of the labor force in gold mines work in small-scale, local mines, though they produce just 10 percent of the global gold supply, according to Fairtrade International. Some 100 million people depend on those mines for their livelihood.

Fairtrade International, a consortium of stakeholders committed to standards that make sure farmers and workers at the front lines of an industry get a fair share of its profits (it has worked on similar programs for coffee, cocoa and tea), has launched a certification program for gold.

Fairtrade miners receive 95 percent of the current price set by the London Bullion Market Association and are required to use protective gear and have health and safety training, including the safe use of toxic chemicals like mercury and cyanide.

The leading organization for certifying fair trade products in the states, Fair Trade USA, split from Fairtrade International, which launched the gold program, meaning fair trade gold is even tougher to find in America than it is in Europe and Australia.

Certification as a Fairtrade gold supplier requires a dedicated and auditable supply line. For the gold itself, Choyt says, the price difference is an increase of about 10 percent, or roughly the same as the cost of using recycled gold, another source for his studios.

Reflective Images is the first jeweler to be certified by Fairtrade International in the US, and Choyt says he hopes he's not the last to do so.

"If even 3 to 5 percent of the US gold market was fair trade, there would be probably hundreds of thousands of small-scale miners whose lives would improve," he says. "Hundreds of thousands—maybe more—who wouldn't be eating and ingesting mercury, breathing it into their lungs."

In 2005, mining industry leaders formed the Responsible Jewellery Council to set standards for gold, diamonds and platinum in the name of addressing the concerns over human rights and the environment tied to the supply chain for minerals. Critics say the standard fails to make a real difference in the industry.

"RJC is not a product certification, nor is it a mine certification," Sampat says. "Members of the RJC are required to agree to certain principles, and that's kind of at the corporate level and not at all at the mines."

RJC-certified Rio Tinto, for example, holds interests in but does not manage the Grasberg copper and gold mine in Indonesia, which is owned and operated by a subsidiary of Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold. (Freeport also owns copper mines in southern New Mexico.) The Indonesian mine has been repeatedly shut down by worker protests and is known to use tailings disposal methods that pollute.

Perhaps those big operations have run their course. No one needs additional gold for industrial uses, both Sampat and Choyt say. With some 76,000 tons of gold currently stockpiled in bank vaults, we'd have enough for 186 years.

"There's no reason why we should have large-scale gold mines," Choyt says. "They contribute nothing to the betterment of humanity. The only reason that we should be mining gold is to support these ethical, small-scale mining communities where, amazingly enough, the people of the land garner the resources of the land."

Letters to the Editor

Mail letters to PO Box 4910 Santa Fe, NM 87502 or email them to editor[at]sfreporter.com. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to specific articles in the Reporter. Letters will be edited for space and clarity.

We also welcome you to follow SFR on social media (on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and comment there. You can also email specific staff members from our contact page.