Hello everyone - and Happy Monday! Tomorrow we'll be joining the rest of the
Etsy Twitter Team for a unique summer shopping event. To quote our team blog, "From July 21st to July 27th, the authority on Twitter for all things handmade will be offering a summer feast of cool eco-friendly tips, suggestions, awesome handcrafted genius and a scavenger hunt with lots of 'green' prizes for the winners."
To celebrate, we're offering
20% off on ALL the jewelry in our Etsy store through Tuesday 7/27 - Just enter discount code "Go Green" in the comments section or your order and the discount will be refunded to you via PayPal within 24 hours.
And how does Echo go green? By using recycled metal in our jewelry, that's how! Recycling metal is of particular importance in our industry because 80% of the gold used each year goes into jewelry. Gold mining is an extremely dirty industry: it can displace communities, contaminate drinking water, and destroy pristine environments. Today, gold is primarily found in very low concentrations – less than 10 grams per ton. The only way to extract gold found in such small quantities is to create large open-pit mines and excavate huge amounts of ore. Once it’s extracted, the ore is crushed, piled into huge heaps and sprayed with cyanide, which causes the gold to leach out of the ore. Some mines use several tons of cyanide per day, while just a rice-grain sized dose can be fatal. The cyanide-contaminated waste ore is then usually just abandoned. To produce enough gold for just one ring, about 18 tons of waste ore are created. Amazing, huh?
The good news is that there is enough gold above ground (already mined) to satisfy the demands of the jewelry industry for the next 50 years. Buying recycled gold is one of the most ecologically and socially responsible choices a consumer can make. Join us - Go Green with Etsy and Echo this week!
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