EcoChic’s Ethical Jewellery collection for brides to be

 

by Alice C Doyle

With the wedding season in full swing, EcoChic Boutique’s ethical jewellery collection is celebrating beauty on the inside, as well as the outside.

To the joyous smiles of loved ones, couples up and down the country are cementing their love with the wedding band. EcoChic Boutique offers a contemporary range of fair trade jewellery for brides, grooms and wedding guests.

What thought is given to how this universal and timeless symbol of love came into existence.

Deborah, Creative Director of EcoChic Collection said,” Not everyone is aware of the destruction behind gold and precious stone mining. We want to educate the consumer as well as inspire, which is why we created our ethical jewellery range, collaborating with the worlds most inspired ethical jewellery designers. Jewellery is beautiful, but you have to question just how beautiful it really is, by asking where it came from.”

The story behind the world’s mining of precious metals and gemstones is not as pretty as the jewellery it creates. If it is not ethically produced or Fair Trade, jewellery production can cause wide scale exploitation to miners as well as the surrounding environment.

“Toxic chemicals such as mercury and cyanide are used in large quantities to help extract gold from the ground and these can leach into the local water and soil. The scars from open pit mining are so extensive they can be seen from space. It’s incredibly destructive to the environment”, says Deborah.

Socially, the mining of gold and precious stones also has repercussions on local communities. Miners can experience as long as four months spent working underground in horrendous and cramped conditions in return for a meagre wage, barely sufficient to meet basic living costs. With no safety equipment, prolonged exposure to chemicals causes many health problems. Global Witness has reported that up to a million child labourers are used in the jewellery industry.

Deborah says “Our aim is to limit the damage and social injustice that can lie in the wake of something as beautiful and pure as a wedding band. This is why we are so passionate about ethical jewellery and making people aware that they do have this choice to buy jewellery made by co-operatively run gold mines where producers are paid fair wages. We applaud this marriage of ethics and aesthetics.”

With the launch of the Fair Trade Gold Standard earlier this year, the framework for an ethical and robust jewellery supply chain now exists. By choosing ethical and Fair Trade jewellery, brides to be can transform lives and celebrate their wedding day with a marriage band created responsibly and with fairness for the producer and the environment.

Fair Trade Jewellery is a beautiful celebration, view our gorgeous ethical collections HERE

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