Over the last 50 years as diamonds have strategically come to represent love, luxury, and rarity, their supply chain has equally built a reputation for environmental devastation and human exploitation. Now, as in many industries, the jewelry world has been rocked by advancing technologies and increasingly sustainably-minded customers causing a rush to both improve traditional industry and innovate new methods of practice. The jewelry industry is left questioning, what is the answer to truly transparent and sustainable diamonds?

Above and below ground diamonds

Billions of years ago, deep within the surface of the Earth, carbon atoms under conditions of extreme heat and pressure formed into diamonds. Today, modern technology mimics this natural process inside of laboratory machinery to grow diamonds in as little as two weeks. The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) confirms that in every way, these lab-grown diamonds are the same as their natural counterparts; what differs is the method by which they’re acquired.

Mining for diamonds below ground is a mechanical process that requires human and machine labor to unearth literal tons of rock to access the rough diamonds. It is the accessibility and intensive nature of these processes that have often been scrutinized as disruptive to ecosystems, exploitive of communities and an opportunity of financial gain for warlords and insurgencies.

The Diamond Producers Association (DPA) which represents the 7 largest mining companies in the world, accounting for 75% of diamond mining, claims that many of these concerns have been addressed through increased commitments and regulations such as the Kimberley Process in 2003 which has helped make 99.8% of diamonds conflict free.

While progress is steadily being made to update the processes and ethics of natural diamond mining, the lab-grown diamond industry has seized the opportunity to provide solutions for traceability with supply chains that are guaranteed to be known.

The origin advantage

The technology to grow diamonds above ground was originally created in the 1950s to produce diamonds for industrial use. The GIA notes that it is only in the last 5+ years that technology has advanced to the point of creating lab-grown diamonds of high enough quality to satisfy the jewelry market.

Lisa Linhardt, founder of New York-based studio LinHaus and a mentor to the fellows of Elaine Gold Launch Pad, said,“We made the decision to sell lab-grown since we knew the origin, the labor, where the pieces were cut, right up to the delivery in our own hands. We didn’t have that information for natural diamonds.”

The promise of traceability, no mining, and more affordable prices for customers has seen designers around the world opting for this new technology. However, the diamond mining industry, in the DPA’s Total Clarity report, critiques that created diamonds actually have a larger carbon footprint than natural ones extracted from the ground.

Comparing Carbon

Growing diamonds above ground in labs is incredibly expensive and energy-intensive and all but one laboratory in the world use fossil fuels to power the process. When it comes to comparing carbon footprints of natural and lab-grown gemstones though, definitive answers are hard to come by. The BBC notes that lab-grown tech companies are privately owned and not bound to the same regulations that the mining industry is, and exact data about environmental impacts and energy use is often labeled as proprietary information.

However, one lab-grown company, San Francisco-based Diamond Foundry, developed its own machinery powered with 100 percent renewable energy sources to offer the market optimism for truly environmentally sustainable diamonds. Although Diamond Foundry partnered with designers across the globe and brought LA-based jewelry brand Vrai in-house, the company is still a drop in the bucket with fewer than 0.1 percent of diamonds in the world coming from its hydro-powered process.

The Sustainable Solution

Technological advances in the world of diamond production are offering opportunities to forego environmental disruption and uncertain supply chains while using renewable energy sources to replicate billion year old natural processes. While the innovation is promising to mitigate industry impacts, the natural diamond industry is not convinced that lab-grown diamonds will every truly be able to provide the emotional connection, social acceptance and therefore sustainability of value that comes from sourcing a billion-year old, naturally made gemstone.

So, what is the answer for truly sustainable diamonds? Perhaps, as is the case in many industries, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to sustainability and instead, it is the collection of innovative tools that is needed to provide the jewelry industry with varied approaches for use in their appropriate situations.

“We don’t think there is a perfect solution,” Linhardt explains. “Thinking about what ‘sustainability’ actually means is a great place for the jewelry world to start navigating our way through the supply chain and seeing how we can make adjustments, both in our own companies and otherwise, to create positive impacts.”