These days more and more people are buying fair trade, environmentally friendly clothing made from organic cotton or even recycled plastic. It’s now also very easy these to buy ethically-sourced costume jewellery produced from materials like brass, wood and reclaimed glass. But if you’re after something made from precious metals like silver, then you have to look a little harder to find great-looking jewellery that’s been sourced ethically and responsibly. Silver is a particularly tough proposition – it’s chiefly mined as a by-product alongside other metals such as copper, zinc and gold, using processes that require up to 10% of the world’s energy consumption, as well as producing toxic waste like cyanide or mercury during the mining/recovery process. And unless you’re talking about silver obtained from small-scale, “artisanal” mines (which do exist but are thin on the ground), then you also have issues like child labour and low wages as well.
If you don’t want to track down silver jewellery made from newly (but ethically) mined silver, but you still want to go down the fair trade/environmentally friendly route, then there is another option: recycled silver jewellery. In fact, you could argue that recycled silver is more environmentally friendly than newly mined silver, because at least you haven’t had to dig up any more of the earth’s land to get at it.
Where does recycled silver come from and how is it produced?
Before answering these questions, perhaps it’s worth talking about the world’s overall silver consumption. In 2007 for example, world silver consumption was just under 25,000 tonnes (equating to just over 800 million troy ounces). Rather than all going to make jewellery, coins and silverware as you might think, over half of this silver was used in industry, to produce things like batteries, bearings, solder, catalysts and electronic components. Another 4,000 tonnes or so was used in the photographic sector, although this sector will decline now that more and more people are taking digital photographs and printing them off on ordinary paper (if they bother to print them at all). It’s interesting to note that added together, these two applications – industrial and photographic – make up far more than the 7,000 tonnes or so of silver used in the jewellery and silverware market for 2007.
Silver that’s been used to make industrial components, jewellery and silverware tends to be in elemental form, i.e. it’s present as the metal, albeit mixed with other metals or possibly – in the case of industrial components – with plastics. So the recycling process for these is reasonably straightforward – anything non-metallic can be burned off and the metallic part can be melted down. But if you’re talking about silver in photographic film, then it’s a bit more complicated. The silver in photographic film isn’t present as elemental silver metal; it’s in the form of a silver compound which needs to be treated chemically by techniques like electrolysis or reduction.
Once silver has been reclaimed, it can be used to make jewellery in one of two ways: (a) via conventional silversmithing techniques, or (2) via materials such as precious metal clay (PMC) and Art Clay. These contain particles of pure silver mixed with organic binders and water, which can be moulded and fired in a kiln (rather like ordinary clay) to make jewellery items with a very high silver purity – higher than sterling. This means that they are less prone to tarnish than sterling, although there may be a loss in strength. Art Clay, which is manufactured in Japan by Aida Chemical Industries and which was invented in the early 1990s, is entirely made from recycled silver reclaimed e.g. from photographic materials or circuit boards. Both Art Clay and PMC sound like a fascinating craft to get into and are definitely on my “to do” list – watch this space!
© The Silver Snake June 2010