Sideways News

“Evil triumphs when good men do nothing,” said Greg Valerio, who pioneered the concept of fairtrade jewellery and made it a reality.

In 1985 (in his late teens), Valerio watched Michael Buerke’s report as part of Live Aid and was deeply moved.

“Up until that point I didn’t give a shit about anything. I saw that report and it opened up my eyes to the world, to injustice,” he said.

Fairtrade Cred
Valerio then started campaigning for human rights. In 1991, disillusioned by the NGO campaigning sector, he started a charity aiming to educate people about the economic imbalance between rich and poor nations. In 1996, believing he should start practising what he was preached, Valerio launched a fairtrade company called Cred, which sells fairly-traded craft items from the third world. Cred then became a jewellery company by default: none of the other products sold.

Determined to get to the heart of where the jewellery comes from, Valerio and his business partner Christian Cheesman, visited a mine in Rajasthan, India. The appalling conditions turned Valerio’s dream of a fairtrade and transparent jewellery sector into a mission. 

 

In denial
In 2003, the concept of fairtrade jewellery was new and heavily ridiculed. After addressing the National Association of Goldsmiths in that same year, Valerio was told by an audience member to "shut up and go away".

“I think it’s because the jewellery industry just did not want to know that the gold on your finger is dripping in cyanide. They did not want to know that thousands of people were being shoved off their land for large-scale mining. They did not want to know about business between mining companies and governance. That tarnishes the product,” said Valerio.

Valerio, was not trying to tarnish the industry. He simply believed there was an alternative way.

“There’s no point in carping on talking about what everybody else isn’t doing. Do something positive,” he said.

Cred meets Oro Verde
In 2004, Valerio met a representative from Oro Verde, a small-scale gold-mining company in Colombia that extracted without using environmentally-damaging techniques and treated miners fairly. Oro Verde needed a buyer and Cred a source.

Later that year, Valerio launched a website selling four different designs of wedding ring in green and ethical gold. From there things took off. Cred and Oro Verde were instrumental in launching the Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM), taking the fairtrade model and replicating it throughout the small-scale mining sector.

A fairtrade gold standard
Cred and ARM went on to campaign for a fairtrade gold standard, which, with the backing of the Fairtrade Foundation, has now become a reality. Over 70 companies in the UK now want to become licence holders for fairtrade gold.

On buying gold, the key question is where does it come from? Does the
jeweller know its source? Fairtrade, ethical gold does now exist – it’s
a question of asking and buying into what you believe.

Valerio recognises how important our role is, as consumers. We are the
change-makers: "An industry does not change if a consumer does not ask
for it,” he said.

What next for Valerio?
After 15 years of campaigning and proving the concept was possible,
Valerio has left Cred – but will continue pioneering change in the
jewellery sector.

“I’m going to keep going,” he said. “There’s plenty of campaigning to be done in the sector. The change has started but its got a long way to go. I’m starting to look at fairtrade gemstones, the transparency in that. I’m not short of things to do.”

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