Conflict diamonds have long been in the news, but what about the ethics of gold? A writer from New Scientist's Environment Blog went to Africa to see exactly what it took to make his gold wedding band:
it takes two tonnes of rock, blasted from the face, then hauled to the surface, ground up and treated with cyanide, to provide enough for my 10-gram ring. That’s one hell of a footprint for one ring.And on top of that, making my ring required 5 tonnes of water, 30 tonnes of air pumped underground to keep the mine cool, enough electricity to run a large house for several days – and about 10 man-hours of labour. Now, as then, most underground workers are shipped in from villages in Mozambique and Lesotho and Kwazulu-Natal. And, even in the post-apartheid era, they are paid less than $10 a day.
Madness? You might think so. But in the biggest gold reserve on Earth, hundreds of thousands of miners and their families depend on the money that you and I pay out for our gold jewellery.
It's an old ethical dilemma. The miners are arguably mistreated, yet if we boycott their product for gold marketed as more ethical or environmentally friendly, they stand to lose their livelihoods.
Still, one has to wonder whether it is consistent to lay such a great burden on poor miners in order to proclaim that one's own burden is light?
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