“Gold mining is a dirty industry,” said Krista Waddell, CEO of Ounces2Pounds.

“It pollutes drinking water with heavy metals and can leave fresh water thousands of times more acid than a car battery. Even worse than the environmental damage caused by huge, multi-national mining companies can be their inadvertent support of terrorism. Huge tracts of land in the Congo are controlled by the global gold producer AngloGold Ashanti. They have admitted paying extortion money to armed militia in return for access to gold mines.”

Not convinced or feeling a little caught off guard by this new knowledge?

The group, Human Rights Watch, has followed the events in Congo referenced above and on 6th February Nicholas D. Kristof published the article, “The World Capital of Killing” in the New York Times that put the death toll in Congo at an estimated 6.9 million people.

This is only one example of how dirty gold mining hurts the environment and the surrounding local communities but saying that seems like an understatement.

The “No Dirty Gold” movement is calling on retailers to identify and disclose the source of the gold they sell-and to ensure that jewellery, watches, cell phones, computer chips, and other products do not contain gold mined at the expense of communities, workers and the environment.

As consumers, we can do more. First by educating ourselves on where items we purchase come from. Second by signing the petition on the “No Dirty Gold” website and third by selling your old, broken, scrap gold to O2P to be recycled.

Our intention is to smelt the items, not repair or resell. In doing so, we hope to recycle enough to increase the amount of ethical gold available to the jewellery industry and help supply the rapidly expanding requirements needed for medical applications.