We at Sequoyah believe in beautiful results without compromise. All Sequoyah gold is eco-friendly Green Gold, sourced 100% from reclaimed and recycled gold rather than from toxic mining processes.
When we think of gold, we tend to think of gold rushes and romantic movies about the past. But gold is no longer mined by individual miners with pick axes, or prospectors using panning for flakes in running streams.
Gold today is found almost exclusively in very low concentrations – less than 10 grams per ton of ore—which can be imagined as 10 paperclips' worth of gold to one small car's worth of rock. To extract this minute amount of gold requires the creation of huge open-pit mines, where ore is blasted and pulverized into a fine powder, and then chemicals used to leach the gold from the rest of the matter. Cyanide is one chemical that is often used to dissolve and extract gold, and can be harmful to humans and wildlife even with little exposure.
Cyanide used in gold mining can leach into the soil and groundwater surrounding a mine. In Romania in 2000, a cyanide groundwater contamination affected drinking water supplies for over 2.5 million people—and countless fish, birds and other animals perished.
In addition to groundwater contamination, there is the ecological issue of how to dispose the unwanted ore "slurry" left over after extraction.
Metals mining produces more toxic pollution than any other industry. In the US, metal mining is responsible for 96% of arsenic emissions and 76% of lead emissions. Every year, US mines generate an amount of waste equivalent in weight to almost nine times the trash produced by all US cities and towns combined.
To understand the size of the problem, the gold needed to create an average 18-karat gold ring results in 20 tons of mining waste and pollution.
In additional to the environmental impact gold mining has on miners and people living near the mines, gold mining operations are sometimes a source of human rights abuses.
Our rule at Sequoyah is "Uncompromising Performance." We refuse to compromise on the quality of our products, the excellence of our customer service—and we also refuse to compromise on our responsibility to our world and its people. We believe that beauty is only one part of the equation.
All of our gold jewelry is eco-friendly. Sequoyah sells only Green Gold, gold that has been recycled to eliminate the waste, pollution and human rights abuses related to mining.
If you purchase gold from Sequoyah, you can be comfortable in knowing it is produced responsibly.
