At TOBY POMEROY, exquisite beauty and solid craftsmanship are of utmost importance. Equally important to us, though, is the stewardship of our planet and its people. Just as we take great care in crafting of the planet’s most precious materials, we must go to great lengths to ensure that our procurement of these resources is one of as little negative impact as possible. To forgo this responsibility would taint on the legacy of these precious items, as true gifts from the earth.

The jewelry industry has a legacy of destructive mining practices for both metals and gems which are among the worst environmental polluters on the planet today. In addition, many of these mines are are rife with human rights abuses. We at TOBY POMEROY are committed to the jewelry industry reversing these practices, to a world where jewelry, from mine to market, benefits the environment and everyone that touches it. Today, we are proud to be among the first jewelry design studios in the United States to partner with the Fairtrade Foundation and the Alliance for Responsible Mining in offering the world's first Fairtrade and Fairmined gold in our jewelry, to be introduced in 2012. This breakthrough represents a gigantic step towards social and environmental responsibility, authenticity, transparency and traceability in the jewelry industry.

Our search for an ethical and responsible source for these precious materials has been difficult, and our work far from over. But through it, we have been blessed to visit truly amazing places around the globe, and to see such incredible things made possible for the future of ethical jewelry. We invite you to listen to our story, and to join us in our mission to make possible a future where the exquisite beauty of fine jewelry and stewardship of our planet exist together in perfect harmony.

While fly fishing for steelhead in my favorite Oregon coastal river, a thought warmed me: Why not ask my refiner to purify previously used scrap gold and silver separately from newly mined metals then create my jewelry from these reclaimed metals, giving my clients ethically sourced gold and silver?

I called Torry Hoover of Hoover & Strong refiners and, after a couple of days of deliberation, he accepted my request. With this simple pact of co-operation, reclaimed gold and silver had become a reality!

My intention was to give designers, manufacturers and retailers reclaimed EcoGold and EcoSilver that they could feel good about and be proud of and, most importantly, put pressure on the mining industry, sending them a message that the world cares and is watching how they’re treating the planet and its people.

Reclaimed metals were certainly a step in the right direction, but at some level I knew they were not the ultimate solution to the larger issues we in the jewelry industry had to face. My sights were still set upon responsible mining: it had to become a bigger part of the equation for jewelers, and ultimately, all of those who love and appreciate fine jewelry. Responsible mining needed to be sought out as a solution, and promoted and supported wherever it did already exist.

In 2007 I co-sponsored the Madison Dialogue, along with AngloGold Ashanti, BHP Billiton, Ben Bridge Jeweler, Cartier, De Beers Group, Hoover & Strong, Newmont, Rio Tinto, Tiffany & Co. a two day gathering in which responsible mining practices were discussed among jewelry professionals and miners from Peru, Colombia and Sierra Leone, focusing on the development of a third-party assurance for ethical or Fairtrade metals and addressing many of the challenges facing artisanal and small-scale miners.

In the summer of 2008 I learned of a sustainable gold mine in the Yukon Territory of Canada and was invited by Jon Rudolph to visit the mine. The Mammoth Tusk Gold mine is a two-hour helicopter flight from Whitehorse, Yukon was certified and has established a chain of custody guaranteeing that the gold comes from the environmental award-winning Ross Mine, a placer mine in the Klondike region.

As I spent several days touring the facilities, I was amazed by intense history steeped in the geography of the region; The area had decades ago been ravaged by reckless mining operations, with countless towering piles of gravel expelled from ancient gold mines marring the otherwise beautiful countryside. Seeing it firsthand, I was thoroughly impressed by how Jon Rudolph and the Mammoth Tusk miners harvested gold from the earth, leaving no trace behind. The Mammoth Tusk operation was a perfect counterpoint to this area’s tainted history of gold mining.

The environmental and social standards held by Mammoth Tusk Gold were exemplary, documented by their chain of custody as well as being endorsed by the Yukon government and the First Nations tribes in the region. I was delighted to have the opportunity to promote and sell the world’s first authentically lustrous, traceable, ethical gold but before receiving our first shipment, the company succumbed to the global the economic downturn.

I continued searching, in hopes of finding another operation similar to Mammoth Tusk. To my great pleasure, soon thereafter I learned of a group in Colombia, South America who were mining cleanly, responsibly and in the same style as their ancestors. I established contact with the people behind a program called Oro Verde (Spanish for Green Gold), the first program of its kind in the world. It seeks to reverse the devastating damages caused to the Chocó bioregion in Colombia, a rainforest that is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, by out-of-control large scale mining. Oro Verde promotes compliance with 10 environmental and social criteria among traditional gold and platinum mining communities.

Oro Verde gold and platinum from the Chocó Bioregion are mined by Afro-Colombian families, descendants of the Conquistadors’ gold mining slaves, who have collectively owned the land for generations. While it is certainly more efficient in the short run to harvest gold using chemicals, these communities choose to mine naturally because where they’re mining is the place they call home.

TOBY POMEROY is privileged to be one of few designers worldwide who have met the Oro Verde standards as a designer/ manufacturer and have been granted permission to purchase & create jewelry using Oro Verde gold. As of February 2011, Oro Verde is one of only three mines in the world that have been certified in producing Fairtrade and Fairmined gold and is the only one that is mining without the use of hazardous chemicals.