Most American jewellers are familiar with Fairmined gold, which entered the U.S. market a decade ago thanks to the combined efforts of the Alliance for Responsible Mining, the Colombia-based organisation that administers the Fairmined standard; North Chesterfield, Va.-based metal refiner Hoover & Strong; and the members of Ethical Metalsmiths, a non-profit organisation dedicated to transparent, responsible and environmentally sound sourcing practices.
But Fairmined silver, which is produced as a by-product of the gold mining process at all Fairmined mines in Peru and Colombia, does not enjoy the same mainstream reputation.
In early October, JCK caught up with jeweller Will Nevins-Alderfer, owner of W.R. Metalarts in Brattleboro, Vt. and a member of the Ethical Metalsmiths’ Action Coalition, just two days after he returned from a week-long trip to Colombia, where he visited the Chedé mine and met with miners at the Iquira mine to learn how both gold and silver are mined responsibly.
“Silver is really complicated,” says Nevins-Alderfer. “A lot of the initiatives focus on gold because it’s more valuable and you can build in more margin for operating costs and refiners can build in for profit. Silver is so much cheaper per gram or ounce that it becomes a challenge.
“For every gram of Fairmined gold, they find three grams of Fairmined silver,” he adds. “But they often have to sell it at 50 per cent of market value. The industry isn’t set up to benefit the miners. It’s more of a refiner’s game because they can buy it in bulk and end up with a lot of power.
Nevins-Alderfer says that the biggest challenge in promoting Fairmined silver is that many people don’t want to pay the premium. At the Chicago Responsible Jewellery Conference in August, where he was a panelist in a session on responsible silver, “we talked a lot about the true value of something, and it’s not just the market value,” he says. “It’s a premium product, traceable silver. And traceable silver is more valuable. You’re not just buying the silver, you’re supporting the 57 miners at Chedé.
Nevins-Alderfer, who specialises in bespoke designs, mainly for engagement and wedding rings, came to his commitment to responsible silver in a rather circuitous way. “An ethos-driven company has always been important to me,” he says. “Early on, I felt it was important to use recycled metal and to source locally. I tried to get in touch with local cutters.
“Then I became a member of Ethical Metalsmiths and learned that recycled wasn’t what I thought it was,” he adds. “You get a lot more impact with positive mining, and we decided that recycling didn’t actually reduce the demand for new metal. The big change three years ago was when I became Fairmined certified and focused on how to buy gold ethically.
As he began to explore the alloys available to him, Nevins-Alderfer learned that Fairmined certification doesn’t require the use of Fairmined silver to make the alloy – “and that kind of annoyed me,” he says. “I wanted to do more. I thought, if I’m going to use Fairmined gold, I want to use Fairmined silver.
Without access to suppliers of Fairmined silver for alloys, Nevins-Alderfer decided to create his own, going beyond certification. From the beginning of 2023, every piece that comes out of W.R. Metalarts’ workshop will come with documentation stating where the gold and silver in its alloy came from.
“Fairmined silver is available to anyone in the industry,” he says. “You don’t have to be licensed or certified to use it. [The regulation is just about using the term Fairmined and making sure that anyone making the claims is certified and licensed as a Fairmined supplier. So anybody can buy it and talk about it as artisanal, small-scale silver or gold.
Nevins-Alderfer is convinced that the industry would actually do more good by embracing Fairmined silver than it currently does by working with Fairmined gold.
“Silver is particularly important to focus on because it’s small-scale, and silver mining uses a lot more mercury than gold,” he says, due to gold’s greater density and much higher value.
“Gold is so dense that you can use an ounce of mercury to get an ounce of gold,” says Nevins-Alderfer. “But to get an ounce of silver, you’d have to use 2.5 times as much mercury. And because it’s so much cheaper – $100 worth of gold versus $100 worth of silver – you use a lot more mercury to get the same monetary value.
