We first spoke to Rajarshi Ray, who dialled in via video chat from London. Ray is a climate action expert who specialises in greenhouse gas accounting and carbon management. His most recent project was developing a sustainability strategy for a prestigious Swiss watchmaker, which gave him great insight into the concerns faced by the luxury industry.

Tatler’s first question to him: are luxury watch and jewellery companies really creating sustainable products? “This is a yes and no answer. It all ties up to investors,” he says. If investors don’t find watchmakers or luxury maisons adapting to the current times, they will lose interest in funding the business—“because climate change is happening. And almost all organisations or industries are affected by it.” 

Investors, businesses, governments, policymakers and even the public can access the sustainability reports generated by a global non-profit organisation called the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). A water management expert with a leading sustainability strategy consulting firm based in the UK, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, says, “CDP is a system of scoring companies in terms of how well they’re doing on the parameters of water, forestry and climate change; and the climate change aspect focuses on carbon emissions.” She focuses her efforts on understanding the environmental impact of how water is managed and used by leading FMCG brands, mining companies, utilities and chemicals companies. The CDP audits the impact caused by carbon emissions and climate change risks, and is run by an independent board of directors, ensuring transparency in the auditing process. As a result, luxury maisons and watchmakers are under the scanner, making it a challenging time for the industry.

One of the major parameters that brands are judged on in the CDP reports is the evolution of protocols they use in their mining processes. Figueroa says that Breitling is very supportive of the attention being paid here. “We believe you cannot talk about sustainability if you cannot talk about origin, which is why we have sought to address these issues by providing transparency and traceability along our supply chain, including for key raw materials, such as artisanal and small-scale gold and lab-grown diamonds,” she says. “Based on this, we are able to work with our suppliers hand-in-hand and support them in addressing social and environmental topics alike.” 

Mining for precious metals such as gold, platinum and silver has a lower environmental and human impact than coal, lead or the iron needed to make steel, but it is an impact nonetheless. One reason is that the methods used have not changed in decades. “Historically, there are three or four processes through which we obtain gold,” Australia-based mining consultant Luke Garcias explains to Tatler over a video call. “And we’re still using the same practices we used 30 years ago.” Garcias is an environmental expert who began his career in the coal mining industry nearly 27 years ago, when the concept of environmental activism was still in its infancy, and who has worked in environmental management, approvals and clean energy technologies throughout his career.

Modern chemists are still looking for ways to create an economically and aesthetically appealing synthetic twin of gold. But until then, Garcias believes “It’s critical to understand where your gold comes from.” Take, for example, that most common of jewellery items: a wedding ring. A wedding band made of 18-karat gold typically contains 75 per cent gold, while the remaining 25 per cent is a mix of copper and silver, in varying proportions depending on the preference for rose, yellow or white gold. So, for example, a wedding band weighing 12g contains approximately 9g of gold. According to Garcias, in order to extract this quantity of gold, miners must excavate approximately 22 tonnes of earth, which is the loading capacity of a standard cargo truck. The excavation alone leads to a number of environmental problems, including soil erosion, deforestation, water and air pollution, and climate change—the latter two through the release of greenhouse gases during the mining process and transportation.

Next, the excavated earth must be separated into ore and waste rock. “However, some of this gold gets stuck in the waste rock and is valuable, so we throw cyanide on it, which is a highly toxic chemical used in leaching out the gold,” Garcias explains. But if there is sulphur in the ore, it consumes the cyanide and prevents it from doing its leaching work, so chlorine, another toxic chemical, gets added to the mix. So, in the extraction of gold, “a variety of chemicals that harm the environment are used”, says Garcias. Through innovations like small-scale gold (high purity gold that is available in very small quantities, typically in the form of thin films, nanoparticles, or nanowires), lab-grown diamonds and upcycled packaging and straps, some brands are making progress in reducing their environmental footprint. “In October 2022, we launched the Super Chronomat 38 Origins, the first watch to provide fully traceable gold and lab-grown diamonds backed with third-party verification of environmental and social measures taken all along the supply chain, along with the chain of custody,” says Figueroa. 

“This is made transparent both to the customer through an enriched blockchain certificate and to the public in our Sourcemap. This is not a one-off—this is the tangible vision of how all Breitling watches will be made by 2025.”

The gold mining industry also tends to use mercury because it easily amalgamates to form an alloy with the gold. The mercury is then evaporated to separate it from the noble metal. No points for guessing that these mercury vapours are hazardous. Why? “Because it is actually mixed with cadmium, cyanide and arsenic—all of which we know cause a lot of problems for humans. We’ve gone from the devil to the deep blue sea, so it’s not just the mercury or the cyanide [that affect us]. But because gold is a mineral, we have no choice but to extract it if we want it in its purest form,” says Garcias.

Add to this the fact that when the mercury from the extraction process enters the waterways, it enters the food chain: fish feast on it, and humans eat that fish. “And we all know what happens to humans when they consume too much mercury: it damages the kidneys, the nervous system and even leads to death,” says the water management consultant. The effects of these processes have been particularly evident in places such as Brazil, Peru and parts of West Africa, where there is a lot of gold production. “The problem with mining is that, in most cases, it is unregulated. This appears to be the social impact of mining on people.”

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