You might be thinking your old gold hoops are going out of style. Maybe you need a new pair of diamond stud earrings after your old ones fell out? Or do you need to put a custom set of diamond earrings round the neck of your anniversary champagne glasses? Whatever your need, Malleable has you covered with a unique line of earrings custom made for you or your significant other.
Whether you’re after hoops or single diamond stud earrings, Malleable caters to the unique tastes of both their male and female clientele. If their wide range of styles aren’t what you are looking for, then you have the option to create a brand new set of bespoke jewelry with the help of Malleable’s professional jewellers.
A new set of flawless round diamond earrings can hang heavily off your ears and the environment if you have to pay for the new materials. That’s one of the reasons why Malleable works primarily with ethically sourced diamonds and other recycled materials. You even have the option to hand in your old jewelry to be remade into whatever you wish.
Ethically sourced round diamond earrings
Malleable Jewellers tries our best to reuse and recycle as much of the materials we source to make your earrings. Our goal is to minimise the impact our business has on the environment and that means giving old metals and gems a second chance. In our attempts to keep materials out of waste streams, we trade between different jewelry practices and even buy gold from customers to a certain extent.
We also advocate for upcycling your old pieces of jewelry. If you have any old round diamond earrings you don’t wear any more, instead of selling it and buying a new pair, why not give it a new look at a much better cost to both yourself and the environment?
Some projects do need more specific materials and for that, Malleable makes use of a certified Fair Trade network to source conflict-free jewelry. What this means is that we ensure our metals come from legal and reputable mines that treat their workers and the environment well. This stretches to our gemstones as well. Malleable checks and double checks that our diamonds and other jewels are in no way involved in illicit trades or in funding acts of war, all thanks to the Kimberley Process.
Where do the materials come from?
How do we make sure your diamond earrings are ethical? Malleable makes use of a mixture of recycling techniques. In the rare cases we need to buy fresh supplies of diamonds or gold, we make use of mines and suppliers that are certified by the Kimberley Process and the Fairmined scheme respectively.
Recycling
Malleable makes use of a host of environmentally friendly business practices when crafting your jewelry and in other parts of our business as well. We extend these practices to our customers, as we ensure our packaging is recyclable and compostable for your convenience. You can even receive a $5 gift card for returning our packaging or for declining packaging entirely.
Malleable makes use of a range of jewelry especially when it comes to our recycled gemstones. We offer a variety of flawless gems and those with a number of inclusions so as to best cover your budget. If you wish to upcycle your old round diamond earrings, you can choose a host of gems that will match or even improve their quality.
As for the gold and other precious metals we use at Malleable, we try our best to ensure none of our materials are unethically sourced. No one wants to wear a set of earrings that weighs down on their values. Unfortunately, when it comes to recycled materials, you can't always guarantee where these metals came from originally.
What Malleable can guarantee is that by using recycled metals, you can rest assured that there is less harm done to the environment than when even the most ethical mine digs the metals out of the ground.
When we do have to make use of newly mined materials, Malleable makes use of The Kimberley Process and Fairmined Metals when we source what we need to craft your new diamond earrings.
The Kimberley process
Simply put: the Kimberley process is a certification scheme that enforces fair trade regulation for rough diamonds. Its main goal is to protect facets of legitimate diamond trade and prevent the sale of what are called “conflict diamonds.”
Conflict diamonds are one way in which conflict is financed, especially in poorer countries. These “blood diamonds” are mainly used to undermine the spending power of a government and to ensure a level of untraceable spending among terrorist groups.
Newly mined diamonds are harder to keep track of. The Kimberley Process helps by cutting this problem off at the roots. It ensures that the mines are not involved in any facet of conflict. It does this through tests and by researching mines before certifying them as conflict free.
The Kimberley Process isn’t an international organisation since it has no permanent offices. Rather, it is run by a conglomerate of industries and participating countries. Most of its implemented strategies are based on the national legislation of the host country.
Fairmined Gold
Fairmined gold is an assurance that your round golden earrings are sourced through fair trade and environmentally friendly business practices. Fairmined is a standard to which many small scale mines all over the world are held by. It ensures that the environment they are working in is protected. Jewelry companies can also be certified to sell Fairmined gold.
The first criteria a mine is judged by before it can be certified as Fairmined, is by its environmental standards. A Fairmined mine has to be small in scale to ensure it has as little impact on the earth as possible. These mines must prove that they do not affect the water supplies in the area they are mining in. This means they have to safely handle the chemicals they use for mining, or better yet, not use any chemicals for mining in the first place.
The mine must also prove it is helping the community it is based in or near. This can range from ensuring gender equality among its workers, to proving the mine is in no way linked to conflict situations or child labour. For all intents and purposes, the mine has to help its community develop in positive circumstances.
This feeds into the third criteria of Farimined: providing safe working conditions. This means health and safety conditions are met and adhered to. This also stretches to the miners’ legal rights to unionise.
Fairmined also helps small scale mines in legal matters. By ensuring legal claims to land, the mine can be ensured they receive a guaranteed minimum price for their yield. Fairmined goes so far as to help mines build trade relationships in the industry to help strengthen their organisation.
How does this affect the final product?
We at Malleable pride ourselves on delivering a quality product regardless of the materials we need to work with. Your satisfaction is what we strive towards, which is why the initial planning phase of your new round diamond earrings is so important.
Regardless of whether we are working with recycled materials, newly sourced materials or if we are working with your old earrings, our goal is to deliver a quality product that exceeds expectations, while maintaining our vision of crafting ethical and environmentally friendly jewelry.
So you can rest assured that our recycled diamonds will shine as bright as they can. How can we do this if we are working with gemstones that aren’t all flawless? That all has to do with the four Cs.
The four Cs in diamond earrings
Size isn’t everything. There’s a lot more that goes into pricing a diamond than the size of the rock. In fact, most of the pricing comes down to how you want the end product to look. Malleable uses the 4 Cs as criteria when we help you craft the latest addition to your jewelry box.
These criteria are: The amount of impurities in your diamond, or its Clarity; The Colour of the diamond; The Carat weight; And the way you want your stone Cut. If you have any trouble picking your jewels, remember that Malleable is available to answer your questions online.
Clarity
Every diamond comes with something called inclusions. An inclusion is a small imperfection that is rarely visible to the naked eye, except in the case of knots. Knots are changes in the colour of your diamonds. Inclusions are naturally formed and aren’t a result of poor cutting. In fact, most inclusions can be cut out of a diamond to help raise its purity by some degree.
Clarity is a large contributor to the value of a diamond. But just because your diamond has a few inclusions in it, doesn’t mean you have to cut them all out. An inclusion can be nearly undetectable if you look at it from the right angle.
Your jewelry designer can help you set your diamond in such a way that any imperfections will be expertly hidden. You can even work an inclusion into your earring’s design to help mask it.
Colour
Diamonds range from clear to light yellow and are measured on a letter scale from D to Z. The most coveted diamonds are obviously the clearer ones that scale as close to D as possible.
The truth is, however, that you can get away with yellower diamonds depending on your chosen metal. Clearer diamonds tend to reflect the metal that they are set in, while a more reflective metal, like platinum, has a similar effect.
If you choose to go with gold earrings, you can place a yellower diamond in the metal without it standing out as much as a yellow diamond would in platinum. It’s all about finding a balance, rather than a contrast.
Cut
This is arguably one of the most important parts of designing any piece of jewelry. When you have your diamond cut, you are not just changing the shape or getting rid of any impurities. Cutting a diamond fundamentally changes the way light passes through it.
A diamond’s “fire” is what gives it life. When white light hits a properly cut gem, it will disperse and reflect the light into a wide range of colours. A diamond doesn’t have to be clear to have this effect. In fact, most stones can skyrocket in value compared to higher clarity diamonds, simply by cutting them in a proper manner.
Carat
Most people are aware of this unit of measurement when it comes to jewelry. This simple measurement of weight can be a bit misleading however, since a high carat diamond does not necessarily mean a larger or more expensive stone.
Clarity is also an important factor when it comes to a diamond’s size as inclusions can shift a gemstone’s weight. Cutting impurities out can shift the stone’s value per Carat but change its overall size.
Don’t be misled, however! Carat is still an important factor in determining the value of a stone, but is by no means the deciding factor. Carat is a nice way to compare stones when you are satisfied with the other three criteria on this list. Especially if you are working on a tight budget.
Final thoughts
The jewelry designers at Malleable are professionals and know exactly how to make the best out of what you give them. Whether you want to make a brand new addition to your round diamond earrings collection or if you want to rework some single diamond stud earrings, Malleable is the best way to do it.
You don’t worry about the cost to the environment with Malleable. We make the best out of recycled jewelry and can even rework your old gold. Malleable guarantees that all of its diamonds and metals are sourced ethically and without any harm done to those affected by its production.