The Ethical Engagement
Ring, Honestly

Five Different Answers to the Same Question

Ask a London jeweller whether their rings are ethical and every one will say yes. Read what they actually publish, and it becomes clear they are answering five quite different questions, sometimes in direct opposition to each other.

That matters, because you will get very different advice depending on which door you walk through, and each argument has a genuine weak point the jeweller making it will not volunteer.

1. Know Exactly Where the Stone Came From

The largest houses answer the question with traceability. If you can follow a diamond from the ground to the counter, the argument goes, you can be confident about how it was mined.

Tiffany publish the most detailed version. Since 2020 they disclose the countries where every newly sourced registered diamond of 0.18 carats and above was sourced, cut, polished, graded and set, and they own workshops in Antwerp, Botswana, Mauritius, Vietnam and Cambodia with published living-wage commitments. They also state they accept only 0.04 per cent of the world’s gem-grade diamonds.

De Beers get there differently, by owning the mines. Every stone carries the De Beers Marque confirming it is natural, untreated and traceable, and because they own the operations in Botswana, Canada, Namibia and South Africa, they can name the country rather than assure you about a supply chain.

The weak point: traceability tells you where a stone came from, not whether mining it was good for anyone. It is a strong answer to "was this stolen or fought over" and a much weaker one to "should we be digging these up at all".

2. Make Sure the Money Reaches the Miners

The second argument accepts mining and focuses on who profits from it.

Harriet Kelsall was one of only about twenty jewellers worldwide to launch Fairtrade gold, which pays a premium directly to the miners who extracted it. That is a specific, auditable mechanism rather than a general assurance, and it is the clearest version of this argument in London.

Michelle Oh is a registered member of the Fairtrade Goldsmiths scheme and sources conflict-free stones from vetted suppliers buying direct to source. Anabela Chan takes it furthest on the stones she does mine: where natural gems are used, she states each is traced to the individual miner, who receives 90 to 95 per cent of the export price.

The weak point: Fairtrade certification is far more developed for gold than for gemstones. A ring can have genuinely Fairtrade gold and a diamond with a much vaguer story, and most buyers will not think to ask separately.

3. Do Not Mine Anything At All

The third argument sidesteps the question entirely. A laboratory-grown diamond is chemically, physically and optically the same material, so if the mining is the problem, remove the mining.

Kimaï sell lab-grown only, set in fully recycled gold. Anabela Chan calls herself the first fine jewellery brand in the world to build around laboratory-grown gemstones, uses diamonds grown by a company that captures carbon dioxide from the air to make them, and melts down aluminium from drinks cans for some of her pieces. Lily Arkwright lead with lab-grown and moissanite, a different stone that costs less again, at the lowest entry point in central London.

Worth knowing before you go looking: every single one of the great houses sells natural stones only. De Beers, Graff, Asprey, Bvlgari, Tiffany and Boucheron have no lab-grown offering at all. If you have decided on a lab-grown stone, Bond Street is simply closed to you, and almost nobody discovers that until they are standing in the shop.

Lewis Malka argues the opposite case publicly, and it is worth hearing: lab-grown suits a buyer wanting maximum size on a limited budget, but it does not hold value the same way. He is the only jeweller on this site who has put his reasoning in writing.

The weak point: growing diamonds takes considerable energy, and not every producer discloses where that energy comes from. "Lab-grown" is not automatically low-carbon; it depends entirely on the grid powering the reactor.

4. Use Metal That Is Already Above Ground

The fourth argument is about the metal rather than the stone, and it is the one most jewellers can genuinely claim.

Blackacre put it most directly: they use recycled precious metals only, which they say saves almost all the carbon of newly mined gold. They also hold B Corp certification, an independent audit of how a company treats its workers, suppliers and the environment, with a score of 99.3 after eighteen months of assessment. Eighty is the pass mark, and only a handful of jewellers anywhere hold it.

Kimaï use fully recycled gold, on the reasoning that there is already more gold sitting above ground than will ever be dug out of current or future mines. Michelle Oh uses recycled gold and platinum throughout, and Anabela Chan around 80 per cent recycled metal in her main collections.

The weak point: recycled gold is genuinely better, but gold is endlessly recyclable and always has been. Buying recycled does not reduce demand for new mining as directly as the framing suggests, and it is the easiest of the five claims for any jeweller to make.

5. Use What Already Exists

The fifth argument gets least attention and is arguably the strongest: do not make a new ring at all.

Stapylton-Smith describe heirloom remodelling as the most ethical jewellery you can make, and will reset stones, add new ones and try different pairings. Gregory & Co in Richmond run an on-site workshop where remodelling and upcycling customers’ own pieces is a core service rather than an afterthought.

David’s Jewellers and Stapylton-Smith both deal in genuine antique and period pieces, which is the same argument in a different form: a stone cut by hand in 1910 has already had whatever impact it was going to have.

There is also a practical case here that has nothing to do with ethics. An antique stone was cut before electricity, behaves differently in the light with more fire and less uniform sparkle, and cannot be bought new at any price. If there is a ring in the family nobody wears, a workshop can make it wearable again, and the stones already mean something.

The weak point: there is not one, really, beyond availability. You are limited to what exists, and if the inherited piece is not to your partner’s taste, no amount of remodelling fixes that.

What to Actually Ask

Almost every jeweller will say their materials are ethically sourced. These four questions separate the specific from the vague.

“Ethical how, specifically?” A jeweller with a real position names a scheme, a certification or a mechanism: Fairtrade, B Corp, the Diamond Craft Journey, traced to the individual miner. A jeweller without one talks in adjectives.

“Does that apply to the gold, the stone, or both?” This is the question that catches most claims out. Fairtrade gold is well established; Fairtrade gemstones barely exist. Ask separately and you will often get two different answers.

“Where was the diamond cut and polished?” Sourcing is only half of it. Cutting and polishing happen somewhere too, and far fewer jewellers can answer this than can answer where the stone was mined. Tiffany publish it for every registered stone; most cannot.

“Can you remodel what we already have?” Worth asking even if you think the answer is no. The most sustainable ring is usually one that already exists, and a jeweller who engages seriously with that question rather than steering you back to new stock is telling you something about how they operate.