Not so ethical jewellery from Wal-Mart…
Jan 16th, 2009 by Katie
Isn’t it sad when your suspicions are proved right?
Back in August I wrote a post about Wal-Mart’s new ethical jewellery range, labelled ‘Love Earth’.
They said:
The Love, Earth pilot project is important because it shows for the first time that materials found in a piece of jewelry purchased from a retailer of Wal-Mart’s size can be made traceable all the way from the mine to the store…
But as I flicked through last November’s copy of The Ecologist on the train yesterday (trying to catch up on my reading!), I came across this unfortunate entry:
All that glitters…
Wal-Mart claims its ‘LoveEarth’ jewellery range is ‘created with materials from eco-responsible, community-friendly sources’.Don’t believe it, says campaign group Global Response: the mines in Utah and Nevada where the gold is mined, and the factories in Peru and Bolivia where the jewellery is manufactured, are not monitored or certified by any credible authority.
Worse still, Dan Randolph, the executive director of Nevada’s Great Basin Resource Watch, says that the mines emit mercury into the air, and deplete and pollute watercourses.
The groups also find it a bit rich that the jewellery exhorts wearers to ‘reduce, reuse, recycle, respect’, when mining is a non-renewable, unsustainable process.
If anyone has any contacts at Wal-Mart, I’d love to get their take on this…
Katie
Debate ethical engagement rings and wedding bands in the Ethical Weddings Forum.
Like you, I’m always skeptical when I see large organisations ‘self-certifying’ themselves. Wal-Mart’s supply chain is a heard of cats getting up to all sorts–undercutting each other, outsourcing spuriously. It’s just wrong.