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With Valentine's Day just around the corner, it's important to understand what goes into that bling you're about to buy your special someone. It can be pretty scary once you understand where some of your jewels come from before they get to the store.
Let's think back to some of the recent wars in Africa. Remember the movie Blood Diamond? While the movie was partially fictional that background was not. In Sierra Leone a recent civil war that cost the lives of nearly 200,000 people was partially financed by the diamond trade. DeBeers, the world's largest diamond company has admitted to controlling prices in order to make a ridiculous profit.
And your jewelry can also be pretty tough on the planet. According to an article in Natural Solutions, a study by the World Watch Institute found that gold mining can be an ecologically disastrous industry. The gold from a single 18-karat ring generates as much as 18 tons of arsenic, cyanide, and mercury-laced mining waste.
What can you do to make sure your jewelry isn't tied to some shady dealings?
Find Greener Jewelry
Find greener gold by checking out No Dirty Gold and make sure all your diamonds carry a Kimberly Process Certificate which means that they are conflict-free diamonds.
- Check out Blythe's guide to accessorizing like a green celebrity.
- Check out Find greener diamonds.
- Make awesome wine cork jewelry.
Craving more green celebrity gossip? Maria Menounos dishes it up on Planet Green TV's Hollywood Green.
