Facts about gold

About gold

● The Earth is estimated to contain about 21 trillion tons of gold. To date, approximately100 000 tons of it in circulation. This corresponds to a cube with sides of 17 meters. (Source: Agenda)

● Extraction of gold exists now in some 100 countries but has long been dominated bytraditional mining nations like South Africa, Australia and the USA.

● Jewellery sector accounts for over half the world’s use of gold.

● Sales of gold jewelery in Sweden had a turnover of over SEK 2 billion 2010th

● The base price for ekoguld 20 percent above the regular price of gold. Returns will be paid as a contribution to the organization that contribute to including rehabilitation of the ecosystem from former gold mining. See http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/gold/ for more info.

Facts about gold mining

The road from mine to jewelry has traditionally been lined with huge environmental problems, corruption, money laundering, child labor and poor working conditions.

The application is handled frequently with toxic heavy metals such as cyanide and mercury without protective equipment. UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that about one million children ages 5 to 17 years are involved in small scale mining.

Child labor in the mining industry in contravention of several international conventions.

In November 2011 Swedwatch, the Swedish Church and Fair Trade Center published a joint review report on the gold industry. Link:http://www.swedwatch.org/sv/rapporter/smutsig-kedja-bakom-glimmande-guld

The report notes that gold and gemstone mining has received little attention in the jewelery industry in Sweden.

Swedwatch concludes that the traceability of gold is virtually negligible and that the companies are using this fact as an argument for not having to take responsibility for problems related to mining.</div>
<div dir=”ltr”>Source: Swedwatch

– SwedWatch report will hopefully result in major changes within the jewelry industry, says Titti Bjernér.