Juia Jewels: commitment to responsible gold from the very beginning
Juia Jewels is a young brand, born in 2018 in Barcelona. It was several years after Júlia Mirete finished her artistic jewellery studies at ESDA Llotja that she decided to create Juia. When she was a student, the film “Blood Diamond” had a great impact on her and questioned her chosen profession because of the injustices related to the origin of precious metals and stones.
So before taking any entrepreneurial steps, the Juia team had already started to look for responsible sourcing options that would allow them to make jewellery in a more ethically-positive way. This is how they came to discover Fairmined, and how ethical gold was to become their first choice from their launch. Right from the start they incorporated aspects such as sustainable packaging, ethical banking, energy consumption criteria (minimal use, efficient systems and using renewable energy sources), the prioritisation of nearby suppliers with values and minimally-contaminant products in their workshop. They organised company management with a horizontal structure that is as democratic as you can get, working as a cooperative, with decision-making being made on an equal basis, with each member having the same right to vote and to company profits.
Since then, they have continued to seek and integrate new practices that have brought them ever-closer to our shared ideal, aiming to minimise the impact of their environmental footprint and the human rights violations that often occur in the supply chains of materials. Throughout this process they also looked into the origin of the stones they use in their designer and custom jewellery creations. Most of their gems are today traceable and responsibly-sourced.
Another important aspect of their jewellery practices is that they only work with natural, untreated gems (treatments on gems to modify their colour or appearance can be environmentally aggressive and harmful to health). They also stand for “CrueltyFree” jewellery and refuse to use products of animal origin such as coral, pearls, tortoiseshell, ivory, etc.
Their main difficulty lies in the integration of silver. Wedding rings make up a significant volume of their orders and part of their clientele chooses silver for economic reasons. Switching to fair silver still scares them because it would imply a more remarkable price increase (at least double) than in the case of gold. So, the next big challenge for the Juia team is focused on integrating responsibly-sourced silver into their new collections. Other areas of short-term focus include learning new sustainable techniques in the workshop, as well as continuing to cooperate and network. Their greatest wish for the future is that the concept of “responsible jewellery” will cease to exist (as, by default, all new jewellery will one day be responsibly-sourced).
