Our Fair Trade Programme
Our Fair Trade (ethical, social and environmental) Vision.
CRED is dedicated to the creation of beautiful jewellery with ethical integrity. We sell jewellery that allows people to satisfy their aesthetic priorities without compromising their rigorous ethical values. We work to a policy of continual improvement, dedicated to pioneering new possibilities for best practice in jewellery.
‘We look forward to the day when it is culturally unacceptable to buy a piece of jewellery that is not independently certified as socially and environmentally responsible’.
Our Sphere of Influence.
As a forerunner and original pioneer in the ethical and fair trade jewellery trade we recognise we have a responsibility to continue to pioneer and we have a sphere of influence beyond ourselves.
1. To educate OUR CUSTOMERS and ensure they understand our priorities and commitments so that they can be confident that we provide the best possible ethical product available on the marketplace.
2. To lead OUR INDUSTRY by example and carve the path for jewellery that does not compromise on either luxury or ethical quality, through active involvement in sector-wide initiatives to make ethical jewellery more feasible.
3. To ensure OUR SUPPLIERS understand our expectations of them in relation to social, environmental, and labour issues to help them strive to continually improve in these areas and produce real improvements in the lives of the miners and manufacturers whose labour produces our materials, and their communities.
4. To provide guidance to OUR STAFF so that they can make appropriate decisions in the course of their day to day work to be sure all of our business activities are ethically directed;
Our Fair Trade Programme.
In spite of the short-term economic benefits it may bring, the mining and processing of precious metals and gems is hazardous for workers and communities alike, and can often devastate important ecosystems. Yet boycotting the use of mined minerals would deprive literally millions of artisanal miners and gem manufacturers of desperately needed livelihoods. At CRED, we use our demand for minerals to help improve the livelihoods and protect the environments of the people whose lives are affected by our business activities. We actively strive to benefit and work with the less powerful in our industry. An example of this is that we exclusively source our gold from small scale miners, who are consistently marginalised from the supply chain by the large scale mining companies. We also work hard to educate our staff, peers and customers on how they can have positive impacts on the vulnerable within our industry.
Our company-wide fair trade & ethical policy determines the minimum acceptable and best practices for our business in eight dimensions.
1. Transparency, Communications & Engagement
2. Progressive pioneering
3. Labour
4. Community Development & Indigenous Peoples
5. Fair Trade
6. Environmental Protection
7. Product Quality
8. Governance and Assurance
Transparency, Communication & Engagement.
Our number one value is transparency. It is the cradle in which everything else is nurtured. Transparency means knowing and disclosing the origin of our materials. Without transparency from mine to retail, we cannot guarantee the ethical quality of our jewellery. Being transparent means being open and willingly communicating the truth. This is why we promise to tell the customer not only where our jewellery comes from, but to be honest about the ethical strengths and weaknesses of each piece or component, so the customer can make an informed choice. We aim to invert the secrecy of the industry by being fully transparent about our jewellery and the promises it embodies.
Progressive Pioneering.
We work in a model of progressive improvement; whenever we make a breakthrough in one area, we will turn our attention to the next problem and figure it out. Whenever we meet a standard, we will think about how we could improve the standard to deliver bigger benefits to our partners. We are progressive pioneers.
Labour.
By working within the fair trade movement we contribute to the improvement of the social standards of workers in the small-scale mining sector. We broadly refer to the ETI Base Code and specifically The Alliance for Responsible Mining’s (www.communitymining.org) fair trade gold standard’s labour section, to determine minimum acceptable practice for the treatment of workers in the mining, refining, gem manufacturing, and jewellery industries.
Community Development and Indigenous Rights.
Indigenous People.
Indigenous peoples are at the heart of our policy. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples enshrines the right to self-determination, to control development of their societies, and to pursue their own traditional economic and social activities. Part VI of the Declaration establishes rights in relation to land and resources, recognising indigenous peoples’ rights to keep and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their land and waters, to control the use of their land, waters and other resources, to have returned to them land and resources taken without their consent, to receive assistance in order to restore and protect the environment, and to determine strategies for developing their land and resources. We aim to source from indigenous communities and to help them secure their right to remain as owners of their traditional lands, in the face of increasing competition from mining companies which have a shorter-term stake in protecting local cultures and ecosystems. Where indigenous people are denied these rights we will campaign on their behalf.
Community Development.
More generally, we contribute to the sustainable social and economic development of all the communities where our materials are mined, processed, refined, and manufactured. We work with partners to empower these communities and improve their quality of life in line with the Millennium Development Goals. We do this through supporting initiatives such as the development of Fair Trade precious metals.
The Millennium Development Goals are:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development
Fair Trade.
Cred Jewellery has been foundational to the creation of fair trade fine jewellery. We operate within the Fair Trade Labelling Organisation (FLO) and the Alliance for Responsible Mining’s (ARM) fair trade principles. This means we directly trade with and pay fair prices to producers who comply with or are working towards compliance with the Alliance for Responsible Mining’s Standard for Fairtrade certified artisanal gold and associated precious metals standard. For other materials, we follow the same principles and aim to work with those who abide by our labour, environmental, and community development requirements.
Empowerment.
As a policy, we prefer small over large, local over foreign, collective ownership over hired labour. This means we give our business (where ever possible) to artisanal miners or mining organisations who own their own production. This is the model which we believe is the most able to nurture local development and build community sustainability because a greater proportion of the value of the mineral stays in the local economy and it legitimises local ownership of the resource and helps protect traditional cultures of production.
Partnership.
We are our suppliers’ partners, not masters. We work in a spirit of cooperation, dialogue, and shared benefit through trade. Either directly or through support organisations, we work to help our suppliers improve their capacity to comply with our labour, environmental, and community development requirements.
Environmental Protection.
Ecosystems can exist without humans; but can the ‘Environment’ exist without us?
The word ‘ecological’ suggests a relationship between the human and the environment with humans as part of the ecosystem, an actor in it, dependent on it. Humans are not necessarily central to an ecosystem. Ecological protection means protecting ecosystems for the sake of themselves, not just because we have human interests in mind, e.g. conserving a species for the sake of ‘biodiversity,’ but for the sake of the species and its individual organisms. When we speak of ecological health or integrity, we mean keeping the eco-sphere healthy for all species.
All our gold and platinum comes from suppliers who have clear environmental management policies and are fair trade green producers. We require them to do the following:
a. Abide by national environmental legislation.
b. Practice reforestation.
c. Minimise water use and prevent pollution of water resources.
d. Eliminate the use of toxic chemicals, such as mercury and cyanide, in the mining and processing of precious metals
e. Preserve ecosystems, particularly those that form the environment of indigenous people.
Product Quality.
We strive for excellence in product quality. We abide by the following principles for assuring the luxury quality of our jewellery:
1. In sourcing our materials we seek full transparency from mine to retail wherever possible.
2. We always use natural stones; our stones are never synthetic, very rarely they will be heat-treated and disclosed as such, though our stated preference is for natural stones and colour where possible.
3. Our diamonds wherever possible come from fully traceable sources. As we have not yet found an alternative fair trade alluvial source for diamonds we source our diamonds from Canada. All invoices are warranted under the Kimberley Process Certification System.
4. All our gold and platinum will be sourced from fairtrade green certified sources.
5. We use 100% recycled silver. We are looking to move towards a small-scale source for silver that we can introduce into the ARM system.
Good Governance & Assurance.
We provide assurance of our ethical quality in the following ways.
1. Our ethical policy is integrated throughout our business model to ensure that every decision that is made considers the ethical as well as the commercial dimensions. Greg Valerio our founder is responsible for integrating our framework throughout the company.
2. Where we do not have complete control over the practices of others, such as our suppliers and manufacturers, we use third-party certified materials. Where we cannot get third-party assurance, we use a chain of warranties to get contractual commitments from our suppliers that they are not in violation of our ethical principles. We also personally visit their operations, and work hard to build and maintain good personal relationships with all of them.
3. Where we control business practice, we do first party monitoring of the implementation of our ethical policy in our decision-making and our operations. This process is embedded into the heart of our Board of Directors.
Conclusion.
We acknowledge that we are not yet perfect. But we try to be as perfect as is possible given the constraints in how the jewellery industry is currently structured. We will make mistakes and we will learn from them. But ‘can-do’ is not enough. We are a ‘will-do’ company. If something cannot be done, but should be done, we will find a way to make it possible. We are pioneers. To this end our commitment to our customers is to continue to progress until we realise our dream of a jewellery market that is endemic with social and environmental certification and transparent throughout the supply chain.
Copyright CRED™
Unauthorised reproduction without written consent is a breach of copyright.