Are Lab-Created Diamonds ‘Forever,’ or Only Second Best?
May 07, 2021
Pandora Jewelry announced this week that it will rely solely on lab-created diamonds (also called lab-grown diamonds) moving forward. Sustainability and affordability are the two factors the jewelry giant pointed to as most influential in its decision. CEO Alexander Lacik said in a statement, “Diamonds are not only forever, but for everyone.” Pandora’s not alone in its march away from mines. Even the world’s largest diamond retailer, Signet, is expanding its lab-created offerings.
What’s behind Pandora’s move to lab-created diamonds
Lab-created diamonds certainly avoid the environmental and human costs, including child labor, that mire mining. A 2020 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report finds that most jewelry companies cannot assure customers that their supply chain is free of human rights abuses. HRW also observed that mine workers have faced increased risk of exploitation and abuse during the pa
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Marty Hurwitz, CEO of Austin, Texas–based MVI Marketing, has been a student of the lab-grown diamond market since 2004. That’s when his company did its first consumer research study on lab-growns, prompted by the news that Apollo Diamond Corp., one of the industry’s earliest growers, “was getting close to producing 1-carat white gem quality,” he says. “The technology goes back to the 1950s with General Electric, but nobody had ever crossed the commercial gem threshold.”
Hurwitz says that first study revealed “very little awareness that diamonds could be grown in the lab, but with each research study that followed, there was a little more.”
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For years, lab-grown diamond sellers habitually dubbed their products
sustainable and eco-friendly
. However, in 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent letters to several companies warning them not to use those terms.
The issue wasn’t just that the companies provided almost no information about the eco-impact of their processes though that probably didn’t help. It was the language that they used, what the FTC called “general environmental benefit claims,” which are forbidden under its Green Guides.
“It is rare that a product can have an environmental benefit in all the ways that consumers might take away from a general claim,” said FTC attorney Robert Frisby.
WD Lab Grown Diamonds First to Achieve SCS Sustainable Diamond Certification, Sets New Industry Standard
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ WD Lab Grown Diamonds ( WD or the Company ), a leading laboratory grown diamond producer in the U.S., today announced that it is the first company to be certified under the provisional Certification Standard for Sustainable Diamonds ( SCS 007 ). This achievement grants WD third-party authorization to use the claims of Certified Sustainable and Certified Climate Neutral on their high-quality, As Grown diamonds. The climate neutral designation is an exemplary achievement, representing a level of accountability beyond standard Carbon Neutrality by also measuring, mitigating and offsetting the entire spectrum of greenhouse gases, climate pollutants and legacy emissions.
No terms were disclosed.
J2 was founded nearly five years ago by materials scientists Jonathan Levine-Miles, who serves as CEO, and John Ciraldo, who is its chief technical officer. It specializes in growing gem diamonds with chemical vapor deposition (CVD), as well as high-performance diamond substrates used for industrial purposes, including optics for advanced synchrotron sources, quantum computer logic, and semiconductor applications.
It also has an extensive intellectual property portfolio, said a WD statement.
“Our acquisition of J2 is an important milestone for WD Lab Grown Diamonds,” said Sue Rechner, CEO of WD, in the statement. “The combination of our patented technology and scale, with J2’s unique process mastery and expertise, will markedly expand our capability.”