Key takeaways:
As millennials turn to lab-grown diamonds for ethical and environmental reasons, traditional diamond miners are pushing back with claims that synthetic diamond creation is much more carbon intensive.
Experts say that the diamond miners’ conclusions don’t take into account many important elements of the traditional production and distribution process.
Instead of competing with their lab-grown counterparts on eco-friendliness, traditional miners could tout the economic opportunities they create in resource-rich countries.
Synthetic diamonds are becoming ever more popular and affordable, and now the natural diamond industry is fighting back. In May, the Diamond Producers Association released a report commissioned from Trucost claiming that mined diamonds were much less carbon intensive than lab-grown diamonds, making them the eco-friendly choice. This follows a recent warning from the US Federal Trade Commission that some synthetic diamond makers were making unsubstantiated claims about the environmental benefits of their products.
The conclusion of the DPA, whose members include the seven biggest diamond mining companies in the world, raised eyebrows. Synthetic diamond creation is relatively simple, requiring carbon, a power source and sometimes gas. Diamond mining is much more complex, involving heavy machinery, transportation and explosives. Yet Trucost estimates that the average polished mined diamond carat emitted 160 kg of CO2, significantly below its estimate of 511 kg for each polished carat grown in a lab. “What the consumers need is transparency and truth,” says Jean-Marc Lieberherr, chief executive of the DPA.
The report comes as the $87 billion diamond jewellery segment, of which 98 per cent consists of mined gems, recorded growth of between 4 and 6 per cent between 2017 to 2018, per Bain. (Meanwhile, the $1.9 billion synthetic diamond market is forecast to grow to $5.2 billion by 2023.) The relatively slower revenue growth has been partially attributed to marriage-age millennials in the West shunning the gems for reasons of price as well as environmental and ethical concerns.
Some experts are pushing back on the DPA’s conclusions. “I think their estimates on greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage are very questionable,” says Saleem Ali, professor of energy and the environment at the University of Delaware and an occasional adviser to diamond makers. “To claim that their carbon and energy footprint is less than synthetic... defies common sense.”
Trucost’s analysis included the impact of energy, explosives and other sources of greenhouse gas emissions on mine sites and in the operation of functions like finance and human resources that are essential to running a pit.
But “the analysis does not include impacts and benefits associated with exploration, mine closure, diamond cutting and polishing, retail and post-consumer phases of the diamond life cycle,” says Rick Lord, analyst at Trucost and one of the report’s lead authors. Exploration, for example, can be carbon intensive, as roads are built to reach difficult-to-access areas.
“If you don’t know the 90 per cent of the iceberg that is below the seas then you cannot come to this conclusion,” says Ashok Som, a management professor at ESSEC Business School and luxury brand strategist. (The Trucost report says miners protect up to three times as much land as they use for extraction, and retrieving diamonds is cleaner than many other precious metals.)
Experts also criticised Trucost for how it measured the carbon emissions of the synthetic gems. It relied primarily on second- or third-hand data, including an article in trade publication JCK, though the numbers were also run by Lightbox, De Beers’s synthetic diamonds lab. The input figures were then applied to the average emissions from electricity consumed in the places lab-grown diamonds are made. These include China and India, where coal-fired power is still widespread. Some synthetic gem labs, like US-based Diamond Foundry, which claims to be the world’s first carbon-neutral producer, are powered by renewable energy.
Lord says it had to rely on non-primary sources for estimates since synthetic labs provide “inadequate” disclosure on their environmental impact, something the International Grown Diamond Association says it is in discussion with its members about redressing. That said, any synthetic diamond lab could relocate to a city powered largely by renewable energy, and it would emit less carbon than a traditional miner, says the University of Delaware’s Ali, adding that it was a “losing battle” for traditional miners to try to out-do synthetic labs on the environmental front.
Still, even some critics of diamond mining find it encouraging that more attention is being paid to environmental impact. De Beers is investing in technology to store carbon in the rocks of mines, a move that it hopes will lead to the creation of its first carbon-neutral pit. “It's not surprising that a report funded by diamond miners determines that mined diamonds are better than lab-grown diamonds,” says Alan Septoff, strategic communications director at Earthworks, a non-profit. “What is a welcome surprise is they're concerned about climate change.”
Done right, diamond mining can also be a boon to the economies of resource-rich countries like Botswana. Ali praised elements of the Trucost report that looked at the social and economic benefits of diamond mining — the diamond industry contributed $16 billion in 2016 to the economies in which it is mining, including $4 billion in salaries and employee benefits.
“To the person who cares about economic development, buy from the large-scale mine. To the person that cares about poverty, buy from a small-scale mine. To the person who loves technology and loves innovation and does not want to do anything with developing countries... buy synthetic,” says responsible mining expert Estelle Levin-Nally.
Lead image for illustration purposes.
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