To consumers, recycling means responsible, but with gold it’s not so simple. In a new article for Vogue Business, Independent Journalist and Amazon Aid Lead Researcher Charlie Espinosa covers the industry debate over how to define – and enforce – the recycled label, and why that debate matters in places like the Amazon, where illicit gold mining has precipitated widespread mercury poisoning and brutal clashes with Indigenous peoples.

“The more I learned about this issue, the more I realized why it mattered in the Amazon and beyond. Under current definitions, newly mined gold could be declared recycled just weeks after extraction. Worse still, a growing body of evidence shows that the recycled market has become a target for bad actors to launder illicit gold,” says Charlie Espinosa, “I am so grateful to Amazon Aid for providing the financial support that allowed me to independently research this important story.”

Amazon Aid directs the world’s attention to issues related to gold mining through a journalism initiative published by respected news media. We also support white papers and other research focused on gold mining’s impact on human health and biodiversity, gold’s supply chain, and more.

Read an excerpt from Charlie’s article on recycled gold here:

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The jewellery industry loves recycled gold. Is that a good thing?

By Charlie Espinosa

Recycled gold is having a moment.

The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), the world’s largest gold trading market, reports that more than half of its gold comes from recycled sources. Brands like Prada and Pandora now boast 100 per cent recycled gold in their products, a pivot Pandora says shrinks its carbon footprint by more than 99 per cent. And last month, the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), the industry’s largest association, released guidelines that will set the norm on how to define and verify recycled gold as more brands show interest.

The decision, part of RJC’s new Chain of Custody Standard, tightens up sourcing requirements. But RJC maintains a loose definition of recycled gold, which includes old jewellery as well as reprocessed “scrap” that has not yet reached a consumer. The inability to clearly define what counts as recycled gold has become the subject of intense debate among researchers, industry members and other experts — and that is just one point of contention.

While proponents say that higher recycled volumes can decrease mining, skeptics counter that increasing dependence on recycled gold as a blanket sustainability strategy undermines legitimate efforts to improve the supply chain, while overestimating its environmental benefits, and — in worst case scenarios — providing an avenue to smuggle illicit, newly mined gold.

“The term ‘recycled’, as used today by many companies, falsely implies to consumers that using such gold has a decisive positive social and environmental impact,” reads an open letter by a coalition of NGOs arguing that the recycled label goes against established definitions and gives companies a false green image without actually cleaning up the sector.

In principle, reusing gold already in circulation should have a smaller environmental footprint than mining it out of the ground, but the reality is more complicated. For one, recycling attracts bad actors who launder illicit gold — repeatedly tied to environmental and human rights abuses — into the legitimate recycled market. Meanwhile, small-scale gold mining provides vital income to millions, especially in communities where the practice is not going to stop if there are no economic alternatives to replace it. Advocates fear that, instead of eradicating new mining, a boom in the recycled market will push them further into poverty and harmful practices.

Part of what makes recycled gold so hard to pin down is, basically, that it‘s gold. Unlike other recycled materials, gold doesn’t degrade over time, and it holds such high value that people don’t throw it away like, say, costume or junk jewellery. What’s more, gold is melted down and reprocessed many times on its path to market, making it very difficult to trace, and meaning that how green recycled gold is will hinge on how stringently the recycled label is defined — and enforced.

> Read the full article on Vogue Business