Welcome to part two (or three, if you count my previous post about wedding invitations) of my How To Have A Green Wedding series. As we all know, the perfect engagement starts with the perfect ring. But are diamond engagement rings really all that perfect?

To start, whenever you purchase a diamond, chances are you are buying a DeBeers diamond. By doing so, you support a monopoly (this is the reason that DeBeers purposely operates outside of US jurisdiction) and supporting artificially high prices. In short, the $10,000 diamond that you purchase isn’t really worth $10k.

Additionally, when you purchase a lab-created or artificial diamond, you ensure that none of your money goes to advance child or slave labor practices. Diamond mining operations are rife with horrific conditions and have a long history of dehumanizing, humiliating practices. Debt slavery and child labor are common in diamond cutting operations in India, where much of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished.

Since the beginning of the modern diamond industry (around the early 1800s) and straight through to today, diamonds have been used to support wars in Africa, pay for mass murders and contribute to genocide, particularly in Africa.

Needless to say, there are several social and economic reasons to choose artificial or lab-created stones over their mined counterparts. But what about the environmental reasons? In short: the diamond mining process is a dirty one. After several years of mining, just about any area is left totally barren and uninhabitable. Even if mined for a relatively short period, the effected landscape is left scarred and polluted. In short, there are no “green” diamonds.

So, what to do about it? In my next post in the series, I’ll go over the various artificial and lab-generated options that are just as beautiful as their mined counterparts. In some cases, the only way to tell the difference between them is the price. So, stay tuned