Face roller made of gemstone - ethical or problematic?

Victoria Beckham, Gwenyth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian have recently sworn by gemstones - and they have even landed at BIOMAZING in the form of face rollers for facial massage and lymphatic drainage. Gemstones have become fashionable and trendy in recent years, with global sales totalling over several billion dollars.

But what about the extraction and ethics of rough gemstones?

Millions of years ago, liquid minerals cooled and hardened inside the earth, creating gemstones in a wide variety of compositions, depending on where they were found and the minerals that were trapped. Each gemstone vein is unique. 

So gemstones are a natural mineral - what could be wrong with that? The big unknown lies in the extraction process and actually has nothing to do with the gemstones themselves. But first things first:

*Personal note: This article was born out of a need to share some of my experiences around the ethical purchase of gemstones. I have a burning desire to share more aspects, but unfortunately this would go beyond the scope of this article - if you would like to know more, please feel free to write to me. The topic is one that is very close to my heart and hopefully the education surrounding the extraction will soon be scrutinised more and more. I hope so!

The business with the stone

The stone industry is known for being particularly opaque. It is almost impossible to trace where a stone comes from and how many hands it has changed hands, if only because the many middlemen themselves simply do not know. Gemstones are a non-renewable resource and the often untraceable labour conditions surrounding their extraction are often known to be unethical: Child labour, dangerous working conditions and completely unregulated workplaces are more often the case than not. What's more, the mining of rough gemstones such as jade and rose quartz is unregulated - which opens the door to even more abuse.

International NGOs have long had the gemstone business on their radar and warn against minerals from Myanmar and the Congo, for example, due to serious violations of human rights and the environment. Trade with Afghanistan is also more than questionable: it is suspected that Taliban organisations earn around 20 million dollars a year from the sale of semi-precious stones.

The problem is bigger

But this information is only half the truth. Because what makes things even more difficult is the fact that obtaining the Rough stones is not the real problem. The mines from which most of the stones originate only come across the precious stones by chance. The real business - and therefore the cause of the overexploitation of the earth and people - is the extraction of cobalt, copper, gold, coal and aluminium: indispensable raw materials for our modern world. Mobile phones, screens, computers and much more can only be produced with them, and the overexploitation of our planet is taking on hair-raising proportions.

Only very few suppliers of stones or products with mined rough gemstones talk about the origin of their stones, and even fewer talk about the effects of extraction. This is often because the traders themselves do not know enough or are not even aware of the problem. The basic principle is that if something is cheap and available in large quantities, the stones probably come from a large mine belonging to a company that has stumbled upon them in its search for valuable natural resources. And there is another element that complicates matters: not even companies traded on the stock exchange have to declare by-products from their mines - so the quantity of raw minerals traded remains completely in the black.

Most retailers buy raw materials from one of the countless middlemen. This is quicker, easier and requires no special expertise. However, they often simply do not have access to reliable information about the origin and extraction of the stones; what information is available is also completely unverifiable.

Buying directly from the mine instead, or at least from the suppliers who cut and polish the stone blocks, involves more effort and requires expertise, but it also gives you insight into the origin of the stones and therefore the choice of whether or not to support mines with unethical practices.

What can consumers do?

Honestly, I don't know. Which dealer will openly tell you that he has no idea where the raw material comes from, where and how it was processed; or even worse, that it is cheap and therefore almost certainly unethically mined stone? We now know that it is hardly the traders who are to blame, but an entire industry that thrives on being as opaque as possible in order to operate in the dark for as long as possible.

But what I do know is what you can do as a manufacturer and direct purchaser of raw materialsYou travel to the place where the stone is quarried to visit the mine and see the working conditions and the impact on the environment. Then you travel to the place where the stone blocks are split and processed. And then you take responsibility for the further processing of the stones: How are the stones cut and processed? Who carries out this work and under what conditions?

As time-consuming and cost-intensive as this may sound, I believe that this procedure should be a matter of course. Or would we buy freshly baked bread with a clear conscience if we knew that our baker had no idea about the origin and quality of the flour and that 99% of it came from dubious sources? This seems downright absurd to us, and yet this is exactly what we accept with more "exotic" products and instead allow ourselves to be seduced by their elegant appearance and beautiful packaging.

The good news at the end

A lot is already happening in the industry, and just as there are already international standards for conflict-free diamonds, the same is also possible for semi-precious stones such as jade, rose quartz, tourmaline and others. NGOs and consumer protection groups are campaigning internationally for the development of ethical standards and other conditions that should form the basis for the purchase and sale of semi-precious stones.

We already have the power in our own hands: we vote with our actions and, in this case, specifically with our wallets.