Sustainability

Most jewellery sustainability writing is a mood. This page is meant to be checkable: what we buy, who we buy it from, what we can prove, and where we are still short.

Where our stones come from

We work in two materials, and we are equally comfortable selling either. What we will not do is pretend one is something it isn't.

Natural diamonds reach us through the Kimberley Process, which certifies that a stone has not financed armed conflict. It is a meaningful floor, and it is worth understanding its limits: the Kimberley Process addresses conflict financing, not labour conditions, not environmental restoration, not the wages paid at a cutting wheel. It is a guarantee about one specific harm, not a general certificate of virtue. We buy from a small number of suppliers we have worked with for years, we can tell you which country a stone was cut in, and where the rough is traceable to origin we will say so.

Lab-grown diamonds are chemically, optically and physically identical to mined ones - the same crystal, the same hardness, the same fire. They carry a substantially lower carbon footprint, no mining footprint at all, and they cost considerably less for the same size and quality. The honest caveat, which the industry rarely prints: a lab-grown diamond's environmental case depends entirely on the electricity that grew it. Growth is energy-intensive. A stone grown on renewable power is a genuinely low-impact object; one grown on coal is less impressive than the marketing suggests. We ask our growers about their energy sources, and we will tell you what we know about yours.

Why mangroves

Every piece we sell funds mangrove planting through our partnership with SeaTrees, in Indonesia, Mexico, Kenya or Australia depending on where restoration is most needed.

Mangroves are not a decorative choice. They sequester carbon in their waterlogged soils at several times the rate of tropical rainforest, and because that carbon sits in anaerobic mud rather than in wood, it stays locked away for centuries rather than returning to the atmosphere the first time there is a fire. They are also working infrastructure: root systems that break storm surge before it reaches a village, nurseries where reef fish spend their first year, and coastline that stops washing away. Roughly a third of the world's mangrove forest has been cleared in the last half-century, largely for shrimp farming and development.

It is a small contribution against a large problem. We would rather do a small thing precisely than a large thing vaguely.

Packaging

Our boxes are made from recycled board, and our protective materials use d2w technology, which breaks the polymer chain down so the material degrades rather than fragmenting into microplastics. Nothing we ship is single-use plastic wrapped in a bow.

We would rather you kept the box. A jewellery box that survives twenty years and still holds the piece it came with is a better environmental outcome than any material we could specify.

Made in Tsim Sha Tsui

Our pieces are set by hand in our own workshop in Tsim Sha Tsui, by people we employ directly, whose work we can watch. There is no offshore subcontractor in the chain whose conditions we are trusting a certificate to describe.

The practical consequence for you: short supply chains are also accountable ones. If something on your piece is wrong, the bench that made it is a lift ride away, not an email address in another time zone.

Built to be kept

The most sustainable piece of jewellery in the world is the one somebody wears for thirty years and then gives to somebody else. Almost everything else is a rounding error against that.

So the durability decisions matter more than the material ones. Prongs heavy enough to re-tip rather than replace. Settings finished on the underside where they meet skin. Clasps tested under load. Complimentary cleaning and inspection for life, because a stone that is checked every couple of years does not become a stone that falls out. We would far rather see you back at the bench for twenty minutes than sell you a replacement.

Where we fall short

Three things we cannot currently claim, and would rather say plainly than quietly omit.

• We cannot trace every natural stone to a single mine. The trade mixes parcels at several points before they reach a retailer of our size. Where we can trace origin we do, and we tell you; where we cannot, we say so rather than implying otherwise.
• We do not yet publish an emissions figure. Producing one that is honest, rather than one that flatters us, requires supplier data we are still gathering. We would rather publish it late than publish it wrong.
• Shipping fine jewellery securely has a carbon cost. Guarded, insured, air-freighted transit is not a low-impact way to move an object. We think it is the right trade for something irreplaceable, but it is a trade, and we are not going to describe it as anything else.

Ask us

If you want to know where a specific stone came from, how a specific piece was made, or what a claim on this page actually rests on, ask your gemologist. If we do not know, we will tell you that too.