Are You Sourcing Gold and Gems Responsibly? Prove It.
Across industries, companies are increasingly incorporating Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices and principles into their daily operations. By implementing strategies that support the three pillars of sustainability—often referred to as "profits, planet, and people"—these businesses are responding to the demands of socially conscious employees, investors, and customers who expect greater responsibility and accountability on these issues.
The jewelry industry has long embraced the basic principles of ESG. Efforts to reduce the environmental and humanitarian impacts of mining have been ongoing for years. However, some designers and retailers believe the industry can and should do more, especially when well-informed consumers are demanding proof of a company’s ethical practices, rather than just seeing them touted on social media. Even pioneers in this field acknowledge that it can be challenging to know where to start.
Knowing what to measure and how to measure it will give you a strong foundation. One approach is to develop a sustainability report, which can create a framework to raise awareness, advocate for, and pursue these goals.
Industry giants like Signet, Tiffany, and Pandora have all released sustainability reports that describe their ESG goals and the progress they’ve made in achieving them. But even if you’re a small business with a budget that doesn’t allow for a dedicated in-house team or full-time consultants, there are steps you can take to make your initial attempt at sustainability reporting less daunting.
Just ask the owners of Philadelphia-based jeweler Bario Neal, who are currently working on their second biannual sustainability report.
“We first looked at our mission, values, and what we wanted to highlight and created a roadmap—not just for the sustainability report, but for our organization’s goals around charitable giving,” says Anna Bario, co-founder and chief designer at Bario Neal.
Bario and other jewelers who have compiled sustainability reports, along with experts who advise them, offer the following tips and insights to help simplify the process.
Engage Your Stakeholders
• Your Suppliers
Supplier certifications and supply chain transparency efforts help determine your company’s climate-related and humanitarian impacts. “If you want to do an ESG-type report, the quickest way is to start buying only from suppliers who are already certified,” says Andrea Hill, founder and CEO of Hill Management Group, based in Chicago.
The global nature of jewelry material supply chains adds complexity. “It’s difficult to localize when we use materials from 40 different countries,” Bario notes. “Many materials are domestic and recycled, but we also do a lot of international work.”
Bario Neal’s supplier assessment process has enabled the company’s founders to engage deeply with their partners. “It really helps build relationships,” Bario says.
• Your Employees
San Francisco-based Brilliant Earth, founded in 2005, has been a pioneer in sustainable practices within the jewelry industry, focusing on recycled metals and gems, and choosing sustainable materials for everything from showrooms to packaging. The company released its first sustainability report in March of this year.
Beth Gerstein, co-founder and CEO, emphasizes that making the sustainability report a team effort is crucial. Gerstein says that compiling Brilliant Earth’s first report was “a team effort. It involved many different groups. We had to coordinate around overall metrics, how to report them, and how to set future goals.”
• Your Customers
Engaging in dialogue with customers is a great way to understand their priorities and inform them of your sustainability achievements.
“We see our buyers as people who can make a collective difference through their everyday actions,” says VJ Geronimo, CEO of Oris Watches USA, based in Norwalk, Connecticut. The company released its first sustainability report earlier this year. “We view ourselves as advocates for raising awareness of this issue.”
• External Professionals
Jewelers who have gone through this process say that hiring consulting experts can greatly assist in creating your first sustainability report.
“We worked with external consultants, not only to develop the report but also to establish processes and structures for creating these metrics,” Bario says, adding that their insights helped her internal team define the scope of their work. “Our initial report really focused on materials, prioritizing by volume—gold, precious metals, diamonds, sapphires—rather than trying to cover everything in the first attempt,” she says.
Why You Should Consider a Sustainability Report
While helping protect the planet and conducting business in a socially responsible manner is motivation enough for many, industry experts say the changing tastes of consumers and their growing awareness of sustainably produced goods provide another compelling reason to invest time and resources in defining your ESG achievements and goals.
“Sustainability and ESG values are obviously important for any business, and from the consumer’s perspective, their interest is clearly much greater than it was 10 to 15 years ago,” Bario says. “I’m amazed at how much progress our industry has made in the past five years in developing the knowledge and shared language needed to source more responsibly.”
The AIDI International Intelligent Diamond Association launched the ESG certification service for the lab-grown diamond jewelry industry in May, which is currently the only globally recognized ESG certification service in the jewelry industry. For more details, please visit www.aidi.org.