This Earth Day, The True Gem is proud to announce that all of their jewelry products made in 2021 are now carbon-neutral and will continuously mitigate their products’ energy carbon footprint through supporting low carbon projects around the world.
The True Gem’s mission is to build a community that changes the way the world sees jewelry through the power of integrity, sustainable and eco-conscious practices, and valuing people and the planet over profit. Established in 2016, The True Gem has sought to challenge industry standards on sourcing, traditions, and transparency. Since January 2021, the teams at The True Gem and Carbon Credit Capital (“CCC”) have worked closely to collect the required data to measure True Gem’s carbon footprint.
Like other industries, the jewelry-making industry generates carbon emissions. During the lifecycle of making a piece of jewelry, over 95% of the total emissions are from electricity usage, particularly in the stage of mining stones and metals. However, lab-grown diamonds consume much less energy than natural diamonds, also using recycled metals. “Through working with The True Gem, we learned that most of their diamonds and gemstones are lab-grown, which reduced about 46% of carbon impact. Plus, all the recycled metals, such as gold and platinum, that The True Gem uses in their products are 90% less carbon-intensive compared to mined metals”, says Pianpian Wang, who is leading the project on behalf of CCC. “The True Gem has made conscious choices to select materials that have a much lower environmental impact.”
But The True Gem did not stop their pace to do more for the environment. They decided to go carbon neutral in hopes to pave the way for the rest of the jewelry industry to actively participate in the change that will affect this world in a positive way. The True Gem hopes to pioneer a better, cleaner, more sustainable future for the jewelry industry as a whole.
The True Gem team has devoted a year-long effort to locate data via communicating with their suppliers and closely monitoring their own energy and fuel usage. “Insufficient data is always a big obstacle when we measure carbon emission, especially in the jewelry making industry, we were told that many companies are very protective of their data and thus we did encounter difficulties to locate certain first-hand data. The True Gem team has been very transparent on their supply chains, which is helpful to refine the assumptions we used in the calculations to make the results as accurate as possible.” Wang added.
The True Gem team has selected an esteemed carbon offset project located in a rural area of Sichuan, China to mitigate 219 metric tonnes of carbon emission equivalent generated from the estimated energy emissions of their product-making activities in 2021. The reduced greenhouse gas emissions are equal to 543,603 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle or carbon emissions sequestered by 3,621 tree seedlings grown for 10 years, according to US EPA’s calculator. Other than reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the Sichuan Household Biogas Project has achieved multiple Sustainable Development Goals (“SDG”), including empowering the local communities with better health.
The True Gem team has selected an esteemed carbon offset project located in a rural area of Sichuan, China to mitigate 219 metric tonnes of carbon emission equivalent generated from the estimated energy emissions of their product-making activities in 2021. The reduced greenhouse gas emissions are equal to 543,603 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle or carbon emissions sequestered by 3,621 tree seedlings grown for 10 years, according to US EPA’s calculator. Other than reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the Sichuan Household Biogas Project has achieved multiple Sustainable Development Goals (“SDG”), including empowering the local communities with better health.