Like Rihanna and celebrities like Lady Gaga, Middle East women love their bling. And diamonds, well the bigger, the sparklier, the better. But what’s a woman to do after she’s told her sheikh boyfriend in Dubai that he can’t keep the pet cheetah? Or the white gold Mercedes running on regular old gasoline? She’s going to have to make new and improved choices when it comes to jewellery. And we don’t mean jewellery made from butterflies or jewels made by bugs.

Blood diamonds, or diamonds mined from countries that use slave labor and low wages to harvest diamonds are out. Vintage diamonds are in, but if you want maximum bling and want to buy a few carats, your best bet in style and cut will be a lab-grown diamond.

My small-town jeweller in Ontario, Canada says that he can’t tell the difference and will only buy lab-grown diamonds after his mined diamond stock runs out. Bigger diamonds are preferred and the biggest, unless you are married to the prince of Saudi Arabia, will be out too. 

So we thought to bring you some solid choices from companies around the world who grow their diamonds in a lab. You can shop in person or online for your ring, and some if they know what they are looking for and can be guaranteed a good return policy. Lab-grown diamonds are known by different names: cultured diamonds, man made diamonds, synthetic diamonds are a few. A carat and a half of a synthetic diamond (1.5 carats) starts at $2000 USD, so don’t expect cubic zirconium prices.

We are talking about real diamonds, made in a laboratory under pressure, in a week and a half inside a large appliance with conditions that are just like in nature, but sped up with the help of pressure.

Leading lab-grown diamond manufacturers in the world?

Some of the companies that manufacture lab diamonds sell only directly to shops or wholesalers while others sell directly to the consumer. Large and important purchases are probably best made in person, while sizing your ring. But we know that people trust online shopping so the below list includes wholesale companies as well as those who do direct to consumer purchases. 

Clean Origin

Clear Origin is a US based company that lets you customize size, cut clarity, setting and a pile of other things that might be important to you. This company sells directly to consumer and the price range for a round, 1/5 carat in a gold setting is about $1500 USD. 

Vibranium Lab

Vibranium Lab is a London-based company that also does direct to consumer shipping, with a list of customizable details that you can select. The cost for a 1.5 carat round diamond is about $2500 USD. Being in a central hub likes London makes it easier for returns or changes in settings. 

James Allen

James Allen has a really visual site that lets you see a large ranges of diamond cuts, not in illustration format. The US-based company does direct to consumer shipping and custom orders. They are known for variety so if you want to be dazzled go to James Allen.

Blue Nile

Blue Nile is an online jewellery retailer founded in 1999. It is based in Seattle, Washington. As of February 2017, it is a subsidiary of Bain Capital. They mainly lead you to their conflict-free diamonds, with 1.5 carats starting around $5000 USD. But if you dig around a bit you find their expansion into lab diamonds. The series is called Lightbox. 

Ritani

Ritani, from White Plains, NY has a better landing page when you enter than Blue Nile, helping you chose earth-grown diamonds over a lab diamond. Choose your own adventure. 

Diamond Foundry

Diamond Foundry is a producer of lab grown diamonds in San Francisco, California, USA. They have about 120 employees, so it’s an established company. I like their advertising, “compressed greenhouse gas.” Which goes on, “Just diamond. No mining. No carbon emissions. No cartel pricing. 

VRAI

VRAI, which means “real” or “true” or “right” in french, is a fine jewellery brand specialising in ethical, man-made diamonds. Using recycled gold and utilising unusual diamond shapes their modern take on luxury jewellery makes for great heirlooms. In terms of settings, they go for a minimalistic “hipster” feel which I like. They are considered best for premium cuts. Visit a showroom to help you select.

12FIFTEEN

Environmentally superior lab grown diamonds at a fraction of the cost. Welcome to diamonds made simple, says 12FIFTEEN based in Franklin, Wisconsin. 

Pandora

Pandora offers its Brilliance collection, a range of lab-created diamond jewellery, and every piece features a round, brilliant cut gemstone.

Queensmith

Queensmith is a UK-based diamond seller offering lab diamonds as identical to the ones found in nature. 

Noemie 

Noemie diamonds are the best lab grown diamonds if you are looking for delicate styles. 

Lark and Berry

Lark and Berry do classic rings best.

Swarovski

Swarovski is a glass-based company that somehow managed to market crystal, that look like my Polish aunt’s serving chalices, into luxury goods. The company is now expanding into lab-grown diamonds. They are based in Austria.

Brilliant Earth

Brilliant Earth is one of the leading brands in marketing sustainable or cruelty-free diamonds. Our lab grown diamonds display the same physical, chemical, and optical characteristics as natural diamonds, and exhibit the same fire and scintillation. 

Have a brand to add? Contact our sustainable luxury editor at bling@greenprophet.com or enter the name in the comments below. 

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Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) announced that the BMW Group is the first customer for EGA’s CelestiAL aluminium, made with the power of the desert sun.

EGA has supplied metal to BMW Group since 2013 for use in the German carmaker’s engines and other parts. EGA will supply 43,000 tonnes of CelestiAL aluminium to BMW Group per year.

Using solar aluminium from EGA will reduce BMW Group’s emissions by 222,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.

BMW Group’s annual supply contract with EGA is worth a three-digit million-euro sum. EGA’s CelestiAL metal will cover almost half the annual requirements of Plant Landshut, the BMW Group’s only production facility for light metal casting in Europe.

Last year, Plant Landshut produced 2.9 million cast metal components including engine parts such as cylinder heads and crankcases, parts for electric drive trains, and vehicle body parts.

EGA’s CelestiAL aluminium is made using electricity generated at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, located in the desert outside Dubai and operated by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority. EGA began production of CelestiAL earlier this month, the first time solar power has been used to produce aluminium commercially worldwide.

Producing aluminium is energy intensive, and generating electricity accounts for some 60 per cent of the global aluminium industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. The use of solar power significantly reduces the emissions associated with aluminium smelting.

Abdulnasser bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of EGA, said, “We are delighted that the BMW Group is the first customer for EGA’s low carbon CelestiAL. Aluminium is lightweight, strong and infinitely recyclable, and that is why it has an important role to play in developing a more sustainable society and making modern life possible. One key example of this is by improving the efficiency of vehicles through reducing their weight.

“But it also matters how sustainably aluminium is made. Solar aluminium is a step forward – using a natural and abundant source of energy in our desert environment to make a metal that is vital to our planet’s future.”

Dr. Andreas Wendt, BMW AG Board Member for Purchasing and Supplier Network, said, “In EGA, we have found a strong partner who values sustainable development just as much as we do. It is a special honour for us to be the first customer to receive aluminium produced using solar electricity. Aluminium plays an important role in e-mobility and using sustainably produced aluminium is tremendously important to our company.”

Another aluminium producer, Rio Tinto, announced this week that they will make sustainable aluminium as well and they will put the traceability part on the blockchain. 

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Remember that story years ago about turning your loved one’s ashes into a diamond? That was the first time I heard about lab-grown diamonds, and well that’s what we are expected to return to anyway, no? Stardust and flecks of diamonds in the sky? Like stars and diamonds, we are carbon-based and to carbon – one day – we will return.

While I love all things that sparkle, for me, I opted out of a diamond wedding ring when my husband asked me what I wanted. A simple gold ring will do just fine I told him. In the back of my mind, I was remembering that Leonardo DiCaprio movie Blood Diamonds and the hell that people in Africa go through to mine our little shiny things.

there is also the environmental degradation that goes along with it, and very high cost for the purchaser, always trying to buy a little more than he can afford. Who needs debt at a time like this?

Jewellers cannot tell a mined diamond from a lab-grown diamond

A good diamond means I love you. So if the diamond is bigger and better it means you love me more? Maybe but only if it’s lab-grown, because seriously we are beyond violating human rights in diamond mines and lab-grown diamonds also mean forever. I met my home-town jeweller in the summer and while my mom was asking him to reset her diamond ring from the 60s, I asked him: can you tell the difference between a lab diamond and a mined diamond, and he said absolutely not.

Diamonds have surely had a great marketing campaign for decades and hey, I think they are a lovely thing. Even lovelier now when you can find heirloom diamonds on the market –– a second-hand diamond. But then your mind wanders. Why did the family sell it? Were they under duress or going through a divorce? That’s what comes to my mind when I think about estate sales.

The really only conceivable way to buy a diamond today and be a serious environmentalist is to buy a lab-grown or lab-created diamond. You don’t need to have it made from the ashes of Uncle Peter or your dog, but just from carbon that the lab chooses for you. This is what happens in nature anyway: heat and energy and a lot of time make diamonds. In the lab, they just speed that all up.

So how are lab grown diamonds made? 

A lab-grown diamond simply put is a diamond made in a lab. They share the identical molecular structure as a “natural” diamond, and optically they look exactly the same. Lab-grown diamonds also look “rare” because they also have flaws and inclusions just like mined diamonds.

How are lab-made diamonds eco?

Good for the land

In the past, people mined diamonds –– they still do it today. But there is no need for disturbing that 100 square foot parcel of land for your carat of diamond. Lab sourced diamonds, made using high pressure and heat generate a very tiny ecology footprint compared to the 6000 pounds of mineral waste and pollution created by the traditional diamond mining industry.

Good for people

Forget about the underground trade, arms dealing and shady sides of the business –– one in a thousand miners are severely injured when mining for diamonds, sometimes beaten and forced into slave labor, and only earn a tiny fraction of that they see.

Don’t believe the seriously flawed Kimberly Process which might claim that your diamond is conflict-free? The industry is notorious for ignoring human rights abuses, and exploiting people. The Kimberly Process only means that the diamonds were not financing rebel movements against governments from where they were mined. The poverty continues, the environment continues to be mired. Crimes are still done against people. Lab-created diamonds bring jobs locally to you, and zero people get hurt while creating them. And they sparkle just the same.

Looking for some companies that ship from online? Try here. Some have bricks and mortar shops so you can feel for the size, design and quality.

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Before a diamond, you need graphite –– and the renewable energy industry is rushing to mine it, as it’s a key material in solar panels and electric car batteries. A Canadian company is touting its “mine local” and “mine revival” mindset showing investors that when renewable energy resource mining, the industry should also walk the walk for reducing carbon emissions. 

From a plane or satellite above you can see the opportunities that Canada offers. Lots of raw water, lots of trees. But under all the rock, especially in areas like the Canadian Shield, also called the Bouclier canadien in French –– you find even more treasures, nickel, gold, silver that has made Canada wealthy. But even more promising for Canadian mining companies is graphite, a once overlooked material, is now key in renewable energy production. 

We all talk about driving electric cars (thanks Elon Musk), and devolving from oil and fossil fuels to natural and renewable energy, but does anyone know where the raw materials from the renewable energy industry come from? Graphite, exposed on outcrops of the Canadian Shield, is a key resource for renewable and clean energy generation and batteries. To grow the industry we need more graphite. 

Graphite is the black stuff we now use in pencils after we understood lead wasn’t safe. Chemically speaking, it is also known as plumbago, and is a crystal carbon form in a hexagon shape, and the most stable form of carbon. After millions of years in nature, and under high pressure, graphite turns into a diamond, and it may be worth as much as the renewable energy business soars. 

Why is graphite essential for renewable energy?

Graphite is essential to silicon production used in solar panels. Because it is resistant to extreme heat it is perfect for the crucibles and moulds used to cast the silicon in solar panels, and in use it works as heat shield and thermal insulation. It is also used in the batteries that store the energy from solar and wind farms once the energy is produced.

Tesla has built a business around lithium ion batteries but also consequently, graphite. Consider that in 2016, some 1.2 million tonnes of graphite was mined across the world for this purpose. In the same year, about one tenth of this of this weight of graphite was used to produce battery anodes. Its low cost and thermal conductivity also makes graphite a contender in capturing solar energy, researchers from the universities of Manchester and Pretoria are finding. 

Recycling mines as part of the new eco-mindset? 

Canada, rich in resources, is also rich in graphite and companies like Berkwood Resources (CVE: BKR, TSX-V: BKR) are looking to Canada to mine graphite, much of it sitting on the surface. Some of the mines they are looking at were used already for mining other minerals and metals. 

But as they report, minerals that were value-less are now valuable and there are so many compelling reasons as to why the renewable energy needs to adopt a mine local mindset, much in the way the food industry and eating local or shop local has pervaded the consumer mindset:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wd0upCady8

Since Canadians are concerned about the environment, the company is not digging down far, but they are pulling the graphite off the surface. 

“Being a green mineral, and if you can mine it with less impact on the earth, the better,” says Berkwood Resources President and CEO Tom Yingling: “Our first shovel in we can sell. More importantly if you have a resource 100 meters down, you have to remove a lot of rock before you can get to the pay zone.”

Berkwood, who reached out to us to tell us about the improved ecological impact of mining local, also believes that they have some of the best graphite in the world –– with 70 to 80 percent of their graphite in Jumbo or Large Flake form –– considered the most valuable and used in the EV batteries or in batteries for wind and solar energy production. 

On top of that their graphite grade is 17%, among the highest grade of all the known mines in the world, they report. As it’s on the surface from previous mining activities, with roads leading to the mines from previous mining activities, the environmental impact is reduced further. Other valuable materials were extracted in the past, and the less appreciated graphite was simple left behind. 

“If it’s not grown, it needs to be mined”

Your electric car battery has already travelled 35,000 miles before you drive it once, compelling TED talk video by Lucy Crane explains. We should mine local and the “not in my backyard mindset” is really important to reconsider when we are talking about undervalued minerals, she explores. 

Consider lithium, which is pulled from a polluting salt mine in Chile (see photo above), then travels to China and back again to North America to be turned into a lithium battery. The lithium travels 50,000 km before the car has driven a single mile. Crane talks about the importance in localizing the production of materials for electric cars and renewable energy, to reduce the environmental footprint of raw materials and production by 90%. 

All this sums up to a compelling reason to invest in mines that put the environment in mind. Canada right now is experiencing a surge in mining investments in all areas from raw materials in renewables to gold mining.

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