Despite the best efforts of the mining industry to expand diamond mining operations around the world, we have already passed ‘peak diamond mining,’ extracting 25% fewer carats in 2016 than a decade ago.

Today, most of the ‘low hanging fruit’ has already been mined. So now, each carat mined is more difficult to extract and more energy intensive than in the past.

Most new diamond production in the last 25 years has occurred in the extreme cold of the Canadian and Russian Arctic, where mining operations are even more environmentally destructive than past mines in Africa, India, and Australia.

Three decades ago, the Argyle Diamond Mine in Australia yielded 7 or 8 carats of diamond per tonne of Earth. Today, yields have fallen to 3.5 carats per tonne and yields are predicted to fall to 2.3 carats per tonne in the years ahead before the mine is expected to close in less than five years. Thus, the mine outputs fewer than half the diamonds it did three decades ago for a given amount of fossil fuel and explosives.

While diamonds are forever, diamond mines are not. During the 21st Century, commercial diamond mining will cease for one of two reasons:

• Geologists have aerial mapped and found nearly all the diamond bearing locations on the planet. Miners will have extracted virtually every available diamond out of every Kimberlite pipe on Earth
• Consumers will vote with their credit cards, demanding diamonds that do not cost the Earth, (pun intended), thus ending the financial viability of diamond extraction.

We trust it is the second option that becomes the reason for the cessation of diamond mining.

The post Is Diamond mining sustainable? appeared first on Adamastar.

The mining of diamonds out of the Earth is by definition not sustainable and is getting less sustainable every year. Over 6 billion carats of diamonds have been extracted from the Earth since antiquity, whereas only 1.2 billion carats of mineable diamonds are estimated to remain in the Earth today according to the public filings of the De Beers and the other large diamond mining companies. In other words, diamonds are forever, but diamond mines are not.

Earth mining diamonds requires diesel and dynamite, growing diamonds only requires carbon and electricity.  Because carbon is abundant, and electricity can be sourced from renewable sources, laboratory-grown diamonds are truly sustainable. Recently there has been some pushback by the earth mining industry claiming the energy to create laboratory grown diamonds is not as eco-friendly as claimed, since much of the electricity required is derived from coal fired energy producers. This is true, however, where possible the laboratory factories are using renewable sources and have future goals to use more and more renewable energy sources as they become available. The lab growing industry has at its core the philosophy of being ethical and environmentally friendly. There is little opportunity for the mining industry to migrate to eco-friendly systems.

Carbon

Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe. There are about 65,500 billion metric tons of carbon on Earth, which is far more carbon than will ever be required to fulfil humanity’s demand for diamonds.

Electricity

It requires approximately 750 kilowatt hours of electricity to grow a 1 carat diamond. That same amount of electricity could power the average household for 25 days.

Because the only way to survive today and in the future, is to reduce waste and limit our impact on the environment, and as more renewable resources and clean energy become available, diamonds will be grown anywhere in the world where abundant solar, hydro, geothermal, or wind energy, is available because the finished product is light, easy to ship, and has a shelf life of … forever.

Many of Adamastar’s suppliers are already using renewable energy to grow diamonds, and more are actively building production facilities, such as a hydro powered diamond production facility under construction in Washington State.

The post Why growing diamonds is sustainable and environmentally superior to mined diamonds? appeared first on Adamastar.

Adamastar’s laboratory grown diamonds are guaranteed to be of known origin, sustainably grown in state-of-the-art facilities operated by well-compensated employees. We know exactly when, where, and how each of our diamonds were grown.

In stark contrast, it is virtually impossible to know when or where a mined diamond was extracted from the Earth. As such, it is not possible to know the true social and environmental consequences of a mined diamond. We have ‘The Kimberly Process’, a complex system which is purported to guarantee that the origin of earth mined diamonds is known, and do not come from so called ‘conflict areas’, however it is a known fact that ‘blood’ diamonds are still entering the diamond pipeline illegally.

The post Origin matters: Rest assured with Lab Diamonds appeared first on Adamastar.