So there’s polar diamonds and fair trade diamonds and arctic diamonds, and though I haven’t seen Leo sexify it up in Blood Diamonds with a fake South African accent, I get the jist of what a blood diamond is. (Thanks Internet!)
And kudos to those out there for pioneering social and environmentally conscious diamonds, because really, there are people who care about that and it’s 2007... we don’t need to be using trade practices established during the colonialization of Africa, right?
Living in Whitehorse gives me a leg up on factory-direct gold and diamonds (ha! I wish!) that are mined around here. Well, I at least can visit the mines the stuff in our jewelry stores came from, although I probably wouldn’t. I just know that I can. I can trace where diamonds come from (the ground up here in the arctic) to the treatment/refinery plants to People’s jewelers or, in my case, Murdoch’s on Main Street.
Now today’s assignment at work is researching eco-gold. Ore that is being panned
(using modern, cool equipment mind you) up here in the Klondike using no toxic chemicals or byproducts that makes hippies and activists and socially conscious consumers happy. (Or so these companies claim ... I’ll bite for now) There aren’t any international rating or certification systems for fair-trade or eco-gold yet, so consumers just have to do the research themselves (though who actually does?).
I thought this was a pretty cool concept. As a twentysomething now making more mint than my student career allowed, I am also able to make conscious choice about where said money goes.
Organic or cheap? Soy or 2 per cent? Fair trade coffee or the don’t-ask, don’t- tell Timmie’s coffee? Do I buy advil for my headache or do naturopathic things like wearing cold wet socks to drain the blood from my head? Decisions, decisions.
Although I must add in the disclaimer that when it comes to gold and diamonds, I never turn away what comes to me in small velvet boxes, nor do I ask where they came from. I mostly just squeal in delight and hug whoever the giver of such jewels happens to be.

Labels: money, social conscious