SUSTAINABILITY & ETHICS

JEWELLERY PACKAGING

Every pieces of Campfire & Compass Jewellery will be sent out in an eco-friendly cardboard jewellery box that has our unique logo embossed on it. These boxes are made from a FSC® Certified* blend of organic and recycled materials - even the glue is 100% eco friendly!

A very small few of these boxes still contain a foam backing for your jewellery which I'm phasing out however, eco-cardboard inserts are now available which I use along with recyclable, black tissue paper. 

If you order hook earrings you may notice that I have placed small silicone stoppers on the hooks. These are to prevent them falling off the cardboard earring backings but you can also wear them on your earrings to prevent them from falling out of your ears. Silicone does not release harmful chemicals when it breaks down nor does it create microplastic particles that pollute the earth.

If you order multiple pieces of jewellery I will aim to use as few jewellery boxes as possible, but if you need a separate box per item, please let me know in the message box during your check-out.

My business cards and even earring cards are all made from recycled cardboard too!

POSTAL PACKAGING

99% of the time I use recyclable, cardboard, mailing boxes and use tissue paper or shredded paper to pack them out if need be. On small occasions when your order is too large for the mailing boxes I purchase I will use a pre-loved padded jiffy bag or box that I have received supplies in.

It's my opinion that reusing and recycling is more important than brand new swanky mailing bags that often get popped straight into the bin, but rest assured that your jewellery will still be beautifully packaged in my branded boxes.

I would love it if you would re-use or recycle the packaging your jewellery arrives in too!

 

ETHICAL SILVER & GOLD

I use eco-silver, which is made from 100% recycled silver from old jewellery, medical equipment, electrical equipment and giftware. It has exactly the same quality and characteristics as .925 sterling silver but with a much smaller carbon footprint! Neat huh?

All gold I purchase is also 100% recycled but still has the purity and quality of unrecycled gold, meaning you get sustainable, high-quality jewellery

I also recycle my own precious metal off-cuts in-house and form it into fresh sheets to create more jewellery!

Any off-cuts too small to use, filings and silver/gold dust are swept into pots, and once they're full they get sent off to a refiner to clean out the impurities and form back into useable metal. Nothing is wasted!

My favourite thing about working with precious metal is that it's infinitely recyclable so you don't have to worry about contributing to landfill from production waste or simply when your jewellery becomes too worn or broken to wear anymore.

 

GEMSTONE SOURCING

DIAMONDS
Most of us know that sourcing truly ethical diamonds can be a very difficult task due to an ongoing history of awful human rights violations and their impact to the environment - even lab grown diamonds take up so much energy to produce and there aren't very many labs who commit to using solely renewable energy to grow them. For that reason I rarely ever list diamonds on my website but I'm open to discussion about sourcing a diamond from one of the following ways:
- a vintage diamond (reduce, reuse, recycle!)
- renewable-energy-grown lab diamond
- mine-to-market*

*Mine-to-market diamond sellers specialise in conflict-free diamonds that are traced directly from the mine, straight to the lapidarist and then to store. This supports local industries without the harm.

OTHER GEMSTONES
The mining of other gemstones generally isn't as harmful to the environment as diamond mining as they're operated on much smaller-scale and don't require the same heavy machinery; but it can be similarly problematic in terms of working conditions and miners being paid fairly for their labour.

Gemstones also often change hands many times between being mined raw, sold to re-sellers, sold to lapidarists and then sold to jewellers so it can be very hard to trace which mine they came from and what conditions the miners work under. For that reason, I have asked all of my gemstone suppliers if they receive assurances from the mines they buy from about the working conditions and if I'm not happy with their answers, or if they don't buy directly from the mines, I won't buy from them.

Unfortunately there is no official industry standard or certification for "fair mined" gemstones so I do have to take their word for it, but I only buy from reputable UK companies, mine-to-market, or small family-owned businesses in Jaipur who I have built relationships with and had frank conversations with about these issues.

ANIMAL THEMED JEWELLERY

You may have noticed that I make and sell jewellery such as fox teeth and jackdaw claws and wondered if any animals were harmed in the making of the jewellery and if any animal parts are actually in the jewellery or not? You'll be pleased and relieved to know that the answers are "no" and "no"!

I love to be in nature, and any animal parts used for my jewellery are remains that I've found in the wild, such as a fox skull found while walking down a woodland or countryside path or bird skulls washed up in the long grasses at the beach. I've always been a bit of a gruesome kid, collecting things like these for years, so it's nice to replicate them in silver and know that they are safe and durable to wear and will last a lifetime.

For anyone wondering if the bird claw, or fox tooth is inside the silver somewhere, you can relax now, it's not! A mould is taken of the tooth/claw, and in a long and technical process, silver is poured into the mould to make an exact replica with none of the gross stuff!

If you have a claw/tooth/bone or even a twig you got overly attached to on a walk, that you'd like making in to jewellery please contact me! I'd love to make your sentimental artefact into a gorgeous piece of jewellery for you!