There are few other things in the world that symbolize luxury like diamonds, but these status symbols often come at a price that goes beyond their monetary value. In recent years, for instance, concerns about the environmental impact and human rights abuse associated with the mining industry have given rise to a demand for more sustainable alternatives to mined diamonds.
To help drive its sustainability practices forward, the world’s biggest jeweler, Pandora, has become the first in the world to announce that it will no longer sell mined diamonds and will instead switch to diamonds made exclusively in labs.
Pandora’s chief executive, Alexander Lacik told the BBC that the company is moving in that direction because “it’s the right thing to do.” On top of that, lab-made diamonds are also cheaper: “We can essentially create the same outcome as nature has created but at a very, very different price.”
The giant jewelry maker is responding to a wider move away from mined diamonds worldwide. As reported by the BBC, in 2020, the market for lab-grown diamond production grew to between 6 and 7 million carats. Meanwhile, the production of mined diamonds has declined to 111 million carts last year, having peaked at 152 million in 2017.
We’ve previously written about the environmental promise of lab-grown diamonds, including one startup that has figured out a way to create the gems out of captured CO2.
