• Nancy Dee
• Bibico
• People Tree – including the new range by Orla Kiely

Whether it’s a unique piece of jewellery to complement your wedding gown or a fairest of the fair bridesmaid dress (I spotted a few clear candidates on the Nancy Dee site), why not browse to your heart’s content at FAIR’s small but perfectly formed shop this Thursday 22 September from 6pm till 9pm?

You’ll enjoy a free glass of wine and nibbles on arrival and if you spend over £80 you’ll also get a free copy of People Tree founder, Safia Minney’s book: Naked Fashion.

Have fun!

• Find FAIR on Queens Road, Brighton

Katie

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

All of Amanda Pearl’s pieces are handmade, she even makes her own beads wherever possible and the crystal comes from vintage chandeliers in Italy.

I was a little confused when I first read about the competition as there seemed to be multiple ways to enter.  But that’s because there are multiple ways to enter! So here they are. You get:

1. 1 entry for becoming a fan of Amanda Pearl on Facebook
2. 1 entry each time you retweet the competition on Twitter (using the hashtag #pearlgiveaway)
3. 1 entry for sharing the competition on your blog (ooh, I just got an entry!)
4. 2 entries for posting their graphic and adding your own captions (find out more about this in the original post on Wishpot)

But if you want to win, enter quickly because the deadline is:

Wednesday 25 May

Good luck!

Katie

Just quote ‘ethicalweddings‘ to get 20% off any item from the the Leblas range.

With Valentine’s Day in mind, the range now includes their ethical Diamond Heart Collection: heart diamond pendants (pictured), rings and earrings all made with ethical 18ct white gold sourced from Oro Verde in Colombia.

A 15% premium is paid to the miners and they work in a co-operative to ensure they protect the environment where they mine.

All the diamonds and rubies in the collection come from known sources in Canada and Tanzania where careful consideration is given to the welfare of the miners, the environment and ecology of the land, and the final price.

Whether you’re looking for a special gift for Valentine’s Day, a wedding or engagement ring, or a present for a very special bridesmaid, take a look at the Leblas collection.

Place your order by 28 February 2011 to take advantage of the 20% off special offer.

Find out more about Leblas – fine jewellery

Katie

To welcome in 2011 we’re delighted to bring you a special offer from ethical jewellery designers, Ingle & Rhode.

Maybe you took advantage of the festivities to pop the question? Or maybe you were the one to say ‘yes’.

Either way, just quote “Ethical Weddings” to get 10% off a beautiful Ingle & Rhode engagement ring or wedding band before 31 January 2011.

Find out more about Ingle & Rhode

Katie

For more than a decade, informed consumers have known about the suffering caused by the trade in conflict diamonds.  The release of the movie Blood Diamond in 2006 meant that this awareness crossed over into the mainstream.

These days, most newly engaged couples have at least some interest in checking that their engagement ring hasn’t contributed to the problem.

Reassuring consumers

Since 2003, the Kimberley Process (KP) has been the main (and usually the only) reassurance available to consumers. A KP certificate would be issued by the government of a diamond-producing nation, and would state in effect that a specific batch of rough diamonds had been produced legitimately.

This was basically as far as it went, the KP never applied a track-and-trace service to specific cut-and-polished diamonds.

A flawed process

Though matters are now coming to a head, the problems with the KP have been apparent for some time. Firstly, it has always been extremely porous, desperately vulnerable to smuggling and administrative corruption.  That it applied to packages of rough diamonds only was another huge weakness. Once a rough stone was passed as Kimberley Certified, it would go for cutting and polishing before disappearing into the notoriously opaque wholesale diamond market.

On questioning a retailer, an interested consumer would struggle to learn which mine or even which country their stone had come from, merely that it had been ‘Kimberley Certified’ – a re-hash of the old assurance about ‘reputable suppliers’ that never meant much in the first place.

A convenient smokescreen

For some years now, NGOs such as Global Witness have been pointing out the gaping holes in the KP.

During this time, the only people pretending that the process was working were the exact same people who had a commercial incentive for perpetuating this myth – namely those diamond dealers and retailers who wanted to continue trading as they always had done, while using the KP as a convenient smokescreen behind which they could evade tricky questions from consumers.

The founders walk

In the last eighteen months, this sham has really started to unravel, as two of the most prominent men behind the formation of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) have walked out in disgust.

In 2009, Ian Smillie of Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) announced his departure –

I feel that I can no longer in good faith contribute to a pretense that failure is success, or to the kind of debates we have been reduced to… The KP has been confronted by many challenges in the past five years, and it has failed to deal quickly or effectively with most of them…

There is a basic truth: when regulators fail to regulate, the systems they were designed to protect collapse. In this case, the diamond industry, which means so much to so many, is being ill served by what has become a complacent and almost completely ineffectual Kimberley Process.

Without a genuine wakeup call and the growth of some serious regulatory teeth, it leaves the industry exposed, vulnerable and perhaps, in the end, unworthy of protection.

In 2010, Smillie was followed by Martin Rappaport, another leading name behind the creation of the KPCS. For Rappapport, the final straw was the flow of diamonds onto the market from the Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe.

Under the control of the Zimbabwean army, these diamonds are extracted and sold to fund a brutal military dictatorship and yet – as far as the KPCS is concerned – they don’t qualify as conflict diamonds. It was this absurdity that prompted Rappaport to denounce the system he had helped to establish –

The Kimberley Process is aiding and abetting severe human rights violations as it certifies, legalizes and legitimizes blood diamonds. Corrupt governments have turned the KP on its head. Instead of eliminating human rights violations, the KP is legitimizing them.

The diamond trade and consumers cannot trust the Kimberley Process, its system of warranties or those that promote the Kimberley Process as an assurance of the legitimate source of diamonds.

We must face the fact that the Kimberley Process is a politicized, government-controlled initiative that is incapable of eliminating human rights violations in the diamond sector.

Which way now for the ethical consumer?

So where does this leave ethically-minded consumers? Essentially, they are confronted with the same issue the diamond business has always presented: a lack of transparency in the supply chain.

Short of travelling to the source and buying a diamond directly, there are a couple of main ways around this.

1. Mine-free diamonds

One route is to avoid mined diamonds altogether, and to buy a synthetic or ‘cultured’ diamond created in a laboratory.

FOR
These stones are genuinely ‘conflict-free’, and avoid the environmental damage that inevitably results from mining.

AGAINST
The High Temperature High Pressure process by which they are created is hardly blameless environmentally.

They are not commercially available in white, so consumers are left choosing from a range of yellows, oranges and pinks.

Many engaged couples find the idea of a stone created in a laboratory less romantic than one produced millions of years ago within the earth’s crust.

2. Canadian diamonds

For those keen on a mined white diamond, the best bet probably lies in the frozen northwest of Canada. A small handful of Canadian diamond brands offer a full track-and-trace service on their stones (each cut and polished diamond is laser-inscribed with a unique tracking number, which consumers can enter into the relevant website to obtain the full history of their individual stone).

FOR
Unlike the Kimberley Process, this system isn’t porous – couples can obtain genuine peace of mind that their diamond is conflict-free, and wasn’t produced in dangerous or exploitative conditions.

AGAINST
We can’t ignore the environmental impact of the mines themselves. While diamond extraction doesn’t make widespread use of toxic chemicals (unlike gold mining for example), there is no denying that open cast mining creates a scar on the landscape.

ON BALANCE
Traceable Canadian diamonds are not ethically perfect, but right now they are probably the best option for couples who want a mined white diamond.

The search for an ethical diamond continues

The collapse of the Kimberley Process will re-open the debate about what it really means for a diamond to be ‘ethical’.

Whatever the long-term answer, it must surely involve genuine transparency and traceability in the supply chain. In this sense, the death of the Kimberley Process should be seen as a positive step – the lifting of a smokescreen that for too long has obscured a whole multitude of sins.

It’s just a shame that countless ethical consumers will now look at rings purchased over the last few years, and be left with nagging doubts about where their diamonds really came from.

David Rhode is a Director at Ingle & Rhode, a bespoke jeweller in London, specialising in engagement rings made with Canadian diamonds and fair trade gold.

Until 22 August – generous souls that they are - they’re giving us 20% off their entire collection.

So if you spot a ravishing ring you’d like for your wedding band but it isn’t in the wedding section – no problem! Or maybe you’re after a special necklace or earrings for your bridesmaid. Just quote “ethicalweddings” to get your 20% discount.

• Find out more about Leblas

Katie

NGOs have threatened to leave the KP if it fails to sever ties with Zimbabwe in the face of ongoing human rights abuses.

Today delegates from the KP are meeting in Israel and will decide whether to suspend Zimbabwe’s membership.

See Reuters’ report from earlier today: ‘Civil society urges action on Zimbabwe diamonds‘

Katie

Much less well known is the controversy around the blood-red ruby.

A legal war is waging in Greenland as the native Inuit Greenlanders fight for their rights to prospect for the ruby through small-scale, responsible mining just as their ancestors have done for centuries.

The 16th August Union

On 16th August 2007, native Inuit Greenlanders were arrested for mining ruby.  True North Gems (TNG),  a Canadian mining company, informed on the Inuit to the local police who were told by The Bureau for Minerals and Petroleum (BMP) to stop them prospecting for ruby – even though this violated the Danish Government’s own Mineral Code and the UN Declaration of Human & Indigenous Rights.

Soon after, there was a clamp down across the island on the rights of indigenous people to mine. Mr. Lars Lund Sorensen, the head of a division at the Minerals Office at the time, said:

We don’t want your sort of people having access to this kind of wealth.

The BMP then set about hiring lawyers who would twist interpretations of Danish laws to cover up their behaviour and protect the interests of TNG.  They even instructed the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute local people but offered to drop charges against miners if they signed paperwork stating they will not mine again.  Where this bribe was refused, they issued fines.

Determined to fight back, the Greenlanders started their own small-scale mining union called the 16th August Union to uphold their right to mine ruby and to act as a united voice to the Greenland people and the world.

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They regard their local government to be acting in collusion with the foreign national mining corporation, TNG to create a ruby monopoly to the exclusion of all native Greenlanders.

The Union believes that the natural resources of Greenland belong first and foremost to their native peoples and asks that:

1) the inherent right of every native Greenlander to prospect, responsibly mine, cut, polish and sell their minerals is respected;

2) Section 32 of the Mineral Code that enshrines their cultural and historical rights to make a living from ruby is upheld;

3) they are treated in a democratic and transparent way with respect to their native traditions and world view;

4) the global community, civil society groups and the international jewellery industry support their just cause.

Read an introduction to the 16th August Union

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Sign the petition

daybreakers video

The 16th August Union are asking you to sign their online petition in support of their indigenous rights to mine ruby on the island of Greenland and to make a living out of responsible, small scale mining. The petition will be sent to the Home Rule Parliament of Greenland.

They ask for their rights to be enshrined in a clear, transparent law based on the following simple idea:

The fundamental rights for indigenous and native Greenlanders under section 32 of the current Constitution to be able to collect, transform, commercialize and export all natural minerals of any sort. (Except oil, gas and radioactive elements in areas with a monopoly).

Read and sign the full Greenland Ruby petition

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What next?

Fair trade jewellery activist, Greg Valerio of Cred Jewellery has got well and truly on board with the Free Greenland Ruby campaign. When Greenland got home rule on 21 June, Greg was there to negotiate with the new Home Rule Government in support of the 16th August Union.

Find out how the campaign is progressing with Greg’s updates on the Fair Trade Jewelry Blog.

Katie
Discuss ethical jewellery in the Ethical Weddings Forum

The Four Horsemen dvdrip

Images from FreeGreenlandRuby.com

Initially, I thought this might be a little awkward and crowded. However, it turned out to be a fantastic idea, both for the environment and for wedding morale. First of all, there were about 150 people at the wedding, and I figured on average there were about 3 people per car, so that made for about 50 cars that would have been driving around town to the wedding events. And I also figured that all told, the milage we would have driven that day just by ourselves would have been about 40 miles, so 35 x 50 = 2,000 miles. That’s about 7 tanks of gas in my car, so the bus certainly saved on fuel.

But the great part was that on the bus we got talking to people and laughing and having a great time … in fact, the party really started on the bus.

So if you’re looking for a simple idea to green up your wedding, having your own wedding shuttle is an excellent idea. I’m certainly doing it for mine now.

Eye of the Beholder trailer Oh, and one shameless plug here, but our free online wedding planner My Wedding Workbook is getting a brand new user interface, which will make it even easier and more convenient to use. Try it out if you like…