Up against Avaaz and Greenpeace, Greg didn’t think he had any chance of winning but for all of us who know him and the work he has been doing for more than 10 years, this award was very much deserved and long overdue.

Years of hard slog finally bore fruit earlier this year when Fairtrade Gold was launched.  Greg had worked tirelessly on this campaign and developed excellent relationships with the other organisations and individuals who helped make it happen: Oro Verde, Cred Jewellery (as mentioned above), the Alliance for Responsible Mining, Fairtrade Foundation UK, his wife Ruth – and Mali and Jemba (their 2 children), Marc Choyt, Catalina Cock-Duque, and Harriet Lamb (read more about the organisations and individuals involved in Greg’s blog post about the Observer Ethical Awards).

But it doesn’t stop there.  Greg sees this award as ‘a marker in the land and a signpost for the future’: it recognises the hard work that has been carried out by so many so far, and points to what remains to be done to transform the jewellery industry.

To keep up-to-date with Greg’s latest campaigns, follow his blog here.

Katie

Take a look at the Leblas fair trade wedding ring collection

The collection starts at just £245 for 9ct options (perfect for our economic climate!) and goes through to 18ct.

Leblas have also launched their first 9ct fair trade gold engagement ring with a 0.2 ct Canadian diamond at £795.

View the Leblas fair trade engagement ring collection

Special offer – 20% off

Don’t forget, you still have time to take advantage of Leblas’ special February offer for Ethical Weddings readers.

Get 20% off all items in the Leblas collection until 28 February 2011 when quoting “ethicalweddings“.

Find out more about Leblas.

What next?

• Talk to other brides and grooms in the Ethical Weddings Forum
• Sign up for our Ethical Weddings monthly newsletter

Katie

When: Friday 26 November, 10am-6pm
Where: Unit 1.03 Clerkenwell Workshops, 27-31 Clerkenwell Close, Farringdon, London EC1R 0AT

Find out more about CRED Jewellery.

Katie

We reported back in April that the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO) and the Association of Responsible Mining (ARM) had launched Fairmined and Fairtrade standards for gold and precious metals.

Now the National Association of Goldsmiths (NAG) is putting together an ethics working committee to help connect socially and environmentally responsible mining communities with western jewellers.

Greg Valerio (founder of Cred Jewellery and co-founder of ARM) and Vivien Johnston (founder of Fifi Bijoux) will work with the NAG’s board to build a resource that jewellers can use to make sure their supplier chains are as transparent as possible.

Johnston, who has been working on auditable standards and traceability for the British Ethical Jewellery Association (BEJA) said:

The partnership between small mining communities and UK small businesses seems a natural one, however both require some support and structure to maximise the benefits to each

While Valerio, who has been working with Fairtrade Foundation in the run up to the launch of certified gold in the UK in February 2011, commented:

Some of the biggest reputational risks the jewellery trade faces today are directly linked to our supply chains. The NAG supply chain ethics working group has been established to research, review and resource jewellers in the UK with practical ways they can positively tackle the human rights and environmental issues linked to our industry

Step by step (and with a lot of hard work from committed activists like Greg and Vivien) we’re getting closer to an ethical jewellery industry.

Katie

Share your thoughts on ethical engagement and wedding rings in the Ethical Weddings Forum

Just pre-order a pair of 3mm width, 14 Carat Gold Ethical Bond©- Wedding rings by 31 May 2010 and pay for only one: £295.00

Available in white or yellow gold.

To take advantage of this offer, email sales@chocolate-couture.com with the following details:

* Your proposed wedding date
* Ring size(s)

Quote Ref: EW10

This means that by the time you say ‘I do’ you could be slipping your finger into a Fairtrade and Fairmined certified wedding ring.

What a great way to seal your vows and celebrate your new life together – with a ring that:

• helps reduce poverty faced by artisanal and small-scale gold miners
• minimises the environmental impacts of gold mining
• is completely traceable

The new Fairtrade and Fairmined gold standards will mean that interested licensees can apply for certification of gold products such as jewellery, commemorative coins, ingots, medals, trophies and religious artefacts.

Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation said:

Our research shows that customers believe buying jewellery for a special occasion holds greater value and significance if it carried the Fairtrade and Fairmined hallmark. People said that the label reassures both the giver and receiver that the miners are getting a better deal.

Start asking your local jewellers now if they will be offering Fairtrade and Fairmined certified products – and if not, why not!

Fairtrade and Fairmined gold will launch in the UK first and then be rolled out to other countries with a long term vision of capturing 5% of the gold jewellery market over a 15-year period – 15 tonnes of Fairtrade and Fairmined gold annually.

• Find out more about what the Fairtrade and Fairmined standards mean for the consumer and for miners.
• Listen to the podcast on Radio 4 – ‘Fairtrade movement turns its attention to gold jewellery’ - with Greg Valerio, founder of Cred Jewellery and now working with the Fairtrade Foundation to campaign for fair trade gold, David Rhode from Ingle and Rhode ethical jewellers, and Sonya Maldar of Cafod.

We’re kicking off the New Year with a special offer on ice of a different sort – the kind you might find sparkling on your finger. 

Yep, until the end of January ethical jewellery supplier, Leblas has an exclusive offer for visitors to ethicalweddings.com with 30% off all its engagement rings and wedding rings when you quote “ethicalweddings“.  Perfect for that Valentine’s Day proposal or 2010 wedding.

And that’s not all, complete your look with 10% off ethical wedding accessories from earrings to necklaces from Suffolk-based contemporary jewellery designer, Karina Anne.  Just quote EW10 when placing your order.

Meanwhile, to find out a bit more about Leblas and what makes them tick, read our interview with founder, Clare Winfield below.

Your name: Clare Winfield
Business name: Leblas jewellery
Location: Sloane Street – London

Tell us a bit about yourself and your business
Leblas jewellery believes that a business can be culturally and socially responsibly which is why we work with skilled artisans to revive skills that are becoming a fast disappearing art while at the same time working with ethical materials.

What or who inspires you?
Arabel and Clare are inspired by Lorenzo, our filigree artisan who finds enormous joy that his work is being celebrated and recognised in London, as well as in his village in Spain. He is a third generation artisan and his passion and care for his work after 40 years of making is awe-inspiring.

What do you enjoy most about running your business?
Watching customers’ faces when they fall in love with a piece of jewellery and you hand over the box. Makes you feel warm and fuzzy!

What is the most challenging aspect?
Trying to get the message across to fashion media that not everything has to be disposable. It’s even more difficult in the current climate but we take little steps every day.

What do you feel you bring to an ethical wedding?
We feel we bring unique design. We always add unique design points to make the engagement or wedding rings special to the couple. We want people to look at their jewellery and smile as it brings back memories of their day.

How do you see the wedding industry changing over the next five years (if at all)?
We believe customers will be choosier about how and where they spend their hard earned income and spend less but invest in quality instead of quantity.

Find out more about Leblas – fine jewellery

Happy planning!

Katie

Seasonal wedding flowers

The church was beautiful, we found a florist who was a friend of my parents, and who was sympathetic to our green ideas.

She sourced flowers and greenery as seasonally as possible, including some raided from my parents’ garden the previous day (!), and also made up some planters of growing flowers and herbs that we took away to keep afterwards.  The results were stunning.

A very personal wedding ceremony

Our church wedding was fantastic too.  As we are both Christians, the spiritual aspect of marriage was really important to us, so getting married in church was particularly special.

The service was wonderful – our friend and university chaplain led the service so he was able to tailor it to us quite a lot (his address to the congregation after the marriage involved Bagpuss!) – and as there is quite a lot of choice about what wording to use for the marriage service, and which readings (Bible or not) and music to use, the whole thing felt very personal.

We entered the church to the Beatles’ ‘Here comes the sun’ in the end, very happy! We involved friends and family in leading the readings, prayers and music too, which was lovely.  We exchanged wedding rings from Cred (who really impressed us), and our little ‘engagement ring’ trees made it along to the church too as decorations.  And we made our own service sheets (using Evolve recycled printer paper), including our story in them.

Snap happy guests

After the ceremony we did a big photo session in the pretty churchyard, with my keen amateur photographer uncle doing the ‘posed’ photos, and the rest of our photos taken by the guests who then posted their digital photos on to us.

It worked out really well, despite what you hear about how you must get in a professional.  With so many people doing your photos you are bound to have a fantastic selection of shots, and they covered different groups of guests, as well as getting some fantastic informal pics to add to the posed ones.

Homemade confetti

We had made our own confetti the previous summer, by drying rose petals in the oven and storing them in warm, dark and dry boxes. We decorated the boxes we stored it in with some shiny red paper from Oxfam (again – they did well out of us!) to make pretty serving boxes to pass round for guests to pick out handfuls from.  And it was so beautiful, the colours were preserved really well.

The cherry tree in the churchyard decided to add to our confetti and showered us with blossom as soon as we stepped out of the church, which was VERY cute.  It made a wonderful backdrop to the photos too.

Love,

Helen and Mike

But with the credit crunch biting, Gina of Chocolate Couture has some great news for the wallet-conscious couple too!

Special offer on engagement rings & wedding bands

To take advantage of this offer, all you need to do is pre-order your ‘pair’ of Chocolate Couture Ethical Bond© Wedding /Commitment Bands or an Ethical Engagement Ring by Valentine’s Day 2009 and you’ll receive a generous £50.00 discount off the total price.

Just email Gina at gina@chocolate-couture.com with the following details:

1. Your proposed wedding or engagement date
2. Ring size(s)
3. Budget
4. Preferred precious metal
5. Preferred ring style/shape

Make sure you quote Ref: EW1108 when placing your order.

More special offers

For a further £25 discount – a total of £75 off your wedding or engagement ring – visit Chocolate Couture’s stand at The Eco Chic Wedding & Home Show at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens on Sunday 8 March between 11am and 4pm.  See www.ecochicweddingandhomeshow.com for more info.

Read an interview with Gina of Chocolate Couture to find out who inspires her and what she enjoys most about running her ethical jewellery business.

Describing her products as ‘an intoxicating blend of conscience and luxury’, Vivien Johnston, the designer behind Fifi Bijoux, talks to Ethical Weddings about her values, her inspiration and what she brings to an ethical wedding:

Name: Vivien Johnston

Location: Glasgow/Edinburgh/London

Tell us a bit about yourself and your business
I launched Fifi Bijoux in 2006. I wanted to offer people a jewellery product with knowledge of provenance of the gold and precious stones and to source these from fair trade small scale artisanal mines.

The environmental impact of mining was also important to me. I feel that the most sustainable solution to extreme poverty which is suffered by the artisanal miners is to manage the land without the use of chemicals and to regenerate mined land by replacing topsoil and promoting re-growth of indigenous plants and trees.

This in turn allows for organic farming to take place for example; which along with the fair trade premium paid for the gold or gems offers the community real financial benefits, as well as respecting their activities and the land.

What or who inspires you?
Annie Lennox is someone who I admire very much for the work she’s carried out for HIV orphans in Africa – something Fifi Bijoux is also passionate about. I met her recently and she was absolutely charming. She also gave her support and encouragement to the ‘From Little Acorns’ project we’ve launched which sponsors HIV orphans in the mining communities in Uganda.

I’m also inspired by Margeret Tuhumwire, the director if the Entebbe Women’s Association there. She is doing remarkable work on very limited resources.

What do you enjoy most about running your business?
I love meeting clients and working with them to create a design just for them. The engagement and wedding ring design service is there to make sure that each couple gets their perfect ring, within their budget.

Most of my clients have stayed in touch long after the wedding; it’s lovely to hear about new babies or their plans for the future! To have played a little part in the romance of surprise proposals and wedding days is a real treat!

What is the most challenging aspect?
My supply chain was difficult to create initially. And I work 14 hour days. I get the jitters the day I know someone is being proposed to and it’s a surprise! But as soon as I get the call ‘SHE SAID YES!’ I have a glass of champagne and go about grinning for the next 3 days…

What do you feel you bring to an ethical wedding?
I bring the ethical rings! They play such a key part in the ceremony. They are worn every day for the rest of your life as a reminder of the love and commitment and of vows you made to each other on that day.

How do you see the wedding industry changing over the next five years (if at all)?
I think it’s becoming less about ‘showmanship’ and more personal to the couples. It’s a chance to express your own values and I think that’s why the ethical wedding idea is one which is gaining such popularity.

Find out more about Fifi Bijoux – luxury ethical jewellery