Campaigners call on jewellery giant to ‘clean up’ this Valentine’s Day

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A new campaign is challenging the world’s biggest jewellery retailer to clean up its supply chain and stop the sale of dirty diamonds and gold.

In the US alone, jewellery sales of nearly US$5 billion are expected in the run-up to Valentine’s Day this Saturday. But campaigners say much of the jewellery sold will be tarnished by human rights violations and environmental damage.

IndustriALL Global Union, London Mining Network, Earthworks, and LabourStart are calling on Signet, which owns jewellers including Kay, Jared, H. Samuel and Ernest Jones, to demand that its key supplier changes its ways.

Signet sources its diamonds and gold from the multinational mining company Rio Tinto, which has a long history of human rights and environmental violations.

“Nobody wants their symbol of love made with gold or diamonds that harmed ecosystems or communities,” said Earthworks’ No Dirty Gold campaign director Payal Sampat.

“It’s high time that the world’s largest jeweller cleaned up its supply chain.”

The coalition is asking Signet to follow its own Responsible Sourcing Policy, which states the company is “committed to the responsible sourcing of our products and the respect of human rights” and that it expects “the same from our suppliers around the world.”

In 2006 the jewellery giant also publicly endorsed the No Dirty Gold campaign’s Golden Rules for more responsible mining, but campaigners say the rules are not being followed.

Sampat told Equal Times that “there is really no way for the consumer walking into the jewellery store to be guaranteed that a product was produced in a responsible way.”

“There are a few industry self-certification systems that exist, and our concern is that those do not provide the consumer with the kind of info that’s needed, or a real independent seal of approval that the product they’re buying is not produced at the risk of human health of worker rights,” she added.

Both Signet and Rio Tinto are part of the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), however campaigners describe the RJC as “industry-backed greenwash”, citing a report which found it to be neither independent nor transparent and “riddled with loopholes which can allow conflict minerals through its auditing and accountability system.”

Rio Tinto’s mining operations span six continents, many of them concentrated in Canada and Australia.

Half of its global assets, valued at US$111 billion in 2013, are also based in Australia, where it has a long history of pursuing policies which harm job security, unionisation and rural communities.

According to campaigners Rio Tinto is a “notorious” violator of workers’ rights, and its “blind pursuit of profit at any cost” has triggered disputes with numerous trade unions as well as environmental, community and indigenous groups.

The report Unsustainable: The ugly truth about Rio Tinto found that 40 workers were killed at the company’s fully or partially owned operations in 2013.

Twenty-eight of those workers were killed at a copper and gold mine in Indonesia when a tunnel roof collapsed; a disaster which a national human rights commission found could have been avoided.

This particular mine, Grasberg, which is 40 per cent owned by Rio Tinto, is the world’s largest – and is frequently held up as the world’s dirtiest.

Located in a national park, it has been heavily criticised for polluting local river systems with mine waste.

There are also serious concerns about the human and environmental impacts of Rio Tinto’s copper and gold mining operations in Mongolia and Papua New Guinea, where its violations of indigenous peoples’ rights and environmental destruction led the Norwegian Government’s state pensions fund to disinvest.

IndustriALL Global Union general secretary Jyrki Raina stated: “Until Rio Tinto drastically changes its ways, the company will sully the reputations of all its major business partners.”

“Signet says that its involvement in non-independent business-run social auditing programmes is a sufficient response to our concerns. This is insulting to all those affected by Rio Tinto’s anti-social conduct, not least Signet customers.”

Sampat added: “While community engagement from mining companies is very much what we want to see, that isn’t sufficient if, at the same time, they are also causing various kinds of human rights or environmental damage.”

"At the heart of what we’re calling for here is a way for companies to not only claim that they’ve built a school, or helped fund a hospital, but that at the same time they’re truly respecting the will of the communities in which they work, and the rights of the workers up there at their operations.”

Signet’s press office did not respond to requests for comment.