All that glitters is not GOLD

Ever since I was a little girl I dreamt of the day I would find the man of my dreams. Whether that meant he was a prince riding on a white horse, a muskrat that found me out on the town, or a pioneer coming to a new land I always looked forward to the day I found him. The day I finally fell in love. Then, he would get down on one knee and ask for my hand in marriage with a little symbol of his love, a ring. We all want love and happiness, but we don’t realize that sometimes the most romantic or perfect items we long for can be the most harmful to our environment. I’m only stating that every item available, even the most luxurious, all have an ecological footprint that we need to consider.

In Anne Thorpe’s Atlas of Sustainability she states “estimates suggest that 90% or more of all materials used in the production process don’t end up in the product but go straight to being waste.” You might ask how can this be true? When I look at a table or lamp I can see exactly where and what it came from or how it was produced. A wooden table came from a tree that was cut and carved into my living room table. Or my lamp is metal and came from a mine heated and poured into a mold. But, what we don’t see are the raw materials of these elements. For a metal to be created raw ore must be found, dug, and purified to then be created into a new material called “pure” metal.

Let me explain what it takes to ore one of the most sought after metals into what it is today: Gold. “Two wedding rings require an amount of ore 10 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 6 feet high, and to make matters worse, the toxic chemical cyanide is used to separate the gold ore from the overburden” (Thorpe). Did you ever think that the symbol of love and commitment that is smaller than and a cubic inch could be created from something so big? Neither did I. Now think of how many people have this placed on their fingers or have numerous rings in their jewelry box and how many cubic feet of this material needs to be extracted from the environment to produce these items. If one person has six gold rings the amount of cubic material used is then 60 feet long, 36 feet wide, and 36 feet high. This is almost the size of a one-story house for six items that are less than 6 cubic inches in size. Do we really need to use such unsustainable materials as these?

During my reading of Waste Equals Food by McDonough and Braungart I was reminded of nature and its unique system. It was stated in this article that “wasted does not exist in nature, because the processes of each organism contribute to the health of the whole ecosystem.” This is a further definition of recycling, but at a completely natural level. So, why as humans do we have to become unnatural in our ways? One way to become more like nature would be to incorporate cradle-to-cradle standards in design, development, and productivity. So, if we want to create a ring we need instead of mining more and more of the environment we need to use what we already have. Turn old gold items into the new items we want.

ATTENTION: It is our job to look past the superficial product and into the raw forms from which it originated. We, as a society, need to realize that we are harming our own environment; the land that we love so much is hurting because of us. We have to find better ways of creating or making what we want. We as the human race need to find self-control. We need to get away from “I need this or I want this.” However, this is a dream I’m sure will never happen. So you ask what can we do? Well, the best solution  is to recycle. Stop taking more and more and just use what we already have. Find ways of reusing old materials and making them into something new.

We don’t see the connection of our daily life in connection to ecology. We don’t think about the decline in the environment in our day-to-day lives. The problem is, at least in the western world, we use so many materials and resources each and everyday. The term “rapid resource depletion” from Anne Thorpe’s Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability has become a very real factor. We as a society are using too many materials, many of which these are non-renewable meaning we cannot get more of what we use up given we have a fixed amount. When it is all used up it will simply be gone for all eternity.

John Roesch explains in his article “Environmental Harm Caused by Mining Gold” that mining has adverse effects on the environment because it is an inefficient process whereby large swaths of land are destroyed to extract a small portion of gold. During the extraction process of gold highly toxic chemicals are used on the minerals and can leak into the environment. The factories that produce gold further pollute the earth. And, mines are abandoned as soon as the resource is used up, yet continue to harm the environment by leaching poisonous chemicals into it.

If LEED, GOTS, and AAFA all have standards for sustainability why are no standards set for the gold industry? Gold jewelry is a huge part of the fashion world. Cartier, Tiffany’s, and Harry Winston. In every fashion magazine one see’s adds for these companies advertising their products. So, why do the fashion industries standards only apply to textiles?  I see a great need for standards in the gold industry. So many hazardous chemicals are used to extract gold from the minerals that encompass the precious metal. The hazards don’t stop there; air pollution is a major problem that comes from the open-air pits. The gold smelting process used to eliminate impurities can also produce massive amounts of air pollution. Yet another problem with gold mining is acid mine drainage which happens when water washes through the mine and into the ecosystem depositing toxic chemicals throughout. LEED has seven topics it focuses on. Two such topics are Materials Resources and Innovation in Design. I feel that these should be incorporated to help the gold industry become more ecologically viable. Pollution prevention is one area that is affected by materials and resources. Therefore, pollution prevention should be an important factor in gold production. Also, innovation in design is crucial to the  alleviation of bad practices and harmful effects on the environment. The innovation in design should focus on ways to recycle these materials from pre-existing items into new products for the fashion industry.

EXTRA READING: One interesting viewpoint on the gold industry is from a website titled the Third World Traveler. The title being “Fool’s Gold: Ten Problems with Gold Mining.” http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Transnational_corps/Fools_Gold.html.