Sustainability

Sustainability means ensuring that the activity/business considers its external impacts in order to avoid compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. 

The impacts include social, environmental and economic aspects.

What does this mean for art work and jewellery?  We are still figuring out what to focus on but there are social and environmental impacts all along the supply chain to obtain the materials we use (metal, wood, stones etc.)  We also have our own impacts for example from the energy (gas and electricity) and chemicals used to modify metals.  

At the moment, we use a lot of recycled and upcycled materials which is an important contribution to minimizing our impact.

Some metals and gemstones have a poor reputation for human rights, safety and environmental impacts during their extraction.  Customers are now more aware of these issues and jewellers are trying to understand how they can minimize any impacts.  One method is to obtain sustainability certification which means that the original material has been assessed against a robust and comprehensive set of criteria covering sustainability issues.  These systems also exist for food products such as chocolate, soy, coffee and palm oil.  However, it is challenging for a small independent jeweller to buy certified sustainable products as they are not widely available and tend to be aimed at larger suppliers and companies.

One simple approach is to use recycled materials as much as possible.  Although the original material may have been extracted with less than perfect approaches, it is always better to re-use materials than extract new.  Luckily metals can easily be recycled (by being melted down and reshaped) and this has happened for thousands of years.  Michelle's main supplier of silver in the UK uses only recycled silver.  We also use mainly recycled copper and like to upcycle old cutlery, brass serving trays, old jewellery, etc.  The vast majority of our wood has been sourced locally from our own little garden, our village, or bought second hand from farmers.

We'd be interested in hearing any suggestions you have in this area on how we can improve.

We use bottled gas to anneal metal and to solder pieces of metal together.  Fossil fuels are clearly a major contributor to climate change due to the CO2 emissions from combustion.  An alternative  approach is to use an electric spot welder rather than a flame.  However, that equipment is very expensive, bulky and does not produce exactly the same results.  So we are interested but not in the short term.  Also, the 'cleanliness' of the electricity needs to be considered too.  Luckily in France, the electric grid is pretty clean with between 20 and 30% renewable energy and 60 to 70% nuclear neither of which produce CO2 emissions.  I'd recommend checking out this website for more interesting details www.nowtricity.com. 

We use an medium sized Efco electric kiln to fire our enamels (shown in photo).  This uses use quite a bit of energy.  We recently acquired a small Prometheus kiln which is more suitable for Michelle's jewellery pieces and use much less electricity.  As mentioned above, the electric grid is pretty clean in France with between 20 and 30% renewable energy and 60 to 70% nuclear neither of which produce CO2 emissions.  I'd recommend checking out this website for more interesting details www.nowtricity.com. 

There are really a large range of chemicals used in silversmithing.  Probably the main one is hot acid which is used to remove oxides formed on the surface of the metal after soldering.  We typically use safety acid (sodium bisulphate)  Tartaric or citric acid are also used.  This we neutralise with baking soda or crushed limestone (which we have in abundance here in the Alps).  In addition there are polishes which contain who knows what (abrasives, solvents and surfactants).  Jewellers' rouge is made from finely ground iron oxides.  Liquid flux is also used in small amounts to help the solder flow.  The traditional type is a borax cone with water.  Borax contains boron, sodium and oxygen.  

In addition to the chemicals discussed above, the action of tumbling finished silver and copper pieces of jewellery for a final polish, results in a liquid in the tumbler containing fine particles of silver (but mostly soap).  Generally, these kinds of wastes can be recycled and the silver reclaimed.  Also, solid wastes such as dust cloths, sandpapers, filters, etc. can be taken to specialised precious metal refiners for reclamation of the silver.  We collect all these potentially valuable wastes for this purpose. 

Preparing vitreous enamels results in many washes and rinsing in water.  Coloured glass powders are glass powders containing proprietary metal salts.  Enamellers can rinse into a dedicated sink to collect the glass powder prior to tipping the clean water down the sink.  We currently have a project collecting and drying these waste washings to see if interesting layers could be used to create original art glass gems.

Photo is an example of enamel colours from Soyer's colour 'nuancier' (https://www.emaux-soyer.com/media/pdf/cristallerie_saint-paul.pdf)