Originally posted on the Better Diamond Initiative Lab-Created Diamonds: An Emerging Movement to Protect People and Places In 2015, 135 million carats of diamonds were mined. In that same time period, children as young as 11 years old worked alongside adults (Amnesty International). In any given year, some mining operations create enough salty water to fill 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools every day, and a 1.0ct diamond requires moving as much as 1750 tons of earth. Humans like to adorn themselves whether with paint, tattoos, fabric, metal or stone. We cannot expect jewelry to disappear, nor would we want to limit this form of creativity. Instead, we can strive to do no harm, or at least
OTTAWA — De Beers, the company whose name has been synonymous with the diamond trade since its founding in South Africa by Cecil Rhodes in the 1880s, is opening the world’s largest new diamond mine in a decade —in Canada’s Far North. The $1 billion Gahcho Kué mine becomes Canada’s fifth operating diamond mine, reflecting the global search for new resources to replace mines in southern Africa that are being slowly depleted and to meet a desire among consumers for “clean diamonds” untainted by the wars and human rights abuses that have given the business a bad name. “It’s very difficult to find a very substantial new diamond mine,” Bruce Cleaver, chief executive of De Beers, said in a telephon
