Making Trouble: Fighting for Fair Trade Jewellery

A deeper look at the seedy underbelly of the jewelry trade business and how one man turned this industry upside down

Fair trade jewelery has been around for a while—but while those crafting it worked under Fair Trade principles, the gold, silver, and precious stones they were using came from some very murky places. Small scale mining is the second biggest global employer, and many of those mines force their workers to labor long hours in dirty and dangerous conditions, for a pittance. Informed by those in the jewelery trade that this would never change, Greg Valerio set out to prove them wrong. Now, fairly traded gold is available, although the battle continues for other metals and products.