Environmental friendly

#environmentallyfriendy, #carbonneutral, #savingwater, #packaging, #reusing, #recycling

Mining, transport, lapidary work and final shipping to your home, all these steps carry environmental impacts caused by the use of water, energy and other resources. While “Ethically mined” and “Ethically sourced” are terms that can be seen more and more frequently in the mining market, nobody really talks about the environmental impacts of the crystal industry.

Eliminating your Crystals Carbon Footprint

To the best of our knowledge we are globally the first ever crystal and gemstone business that measured its carbon footprint AND its ecological footprint, therefore we are spearheading the introduction of environmental consciousness and measures in the crystal business.

Our annual carbon footprint in 2021 was 181.7 t CO2. Our water saving measures resulted in the monthly reduction of water consumption in 75% for the last three months of the previous year. This will result in a significant decrease of our footprint in 2022.

Let's go together even a step further Mining, transport, lapidary work and final shipping to your home, all these steps carry environmental impacts. We now can offer you the unaused by the use of water, energy and other resources. Gemrock Peru is the first crystal company measuring its carbon footprint, which for 2021 is 181.7 t of CO2 emissions.

Based on this analysis we now can initiate concrete measures in order to reduce this footprint a little more each year. However the only way to reach zero carbon emissions is to plant trees in other places which extract CO2 from the atmosphere and this way do eliminate the emissions caused by us.

Saving Water

The use of water in lapidary production is a huge environmental component. All cutting, shaping and polishing tools are water cooled. Additionally cleaning machines and the entire facility from stone dust, as well as cleaning the stones themselves, all this consumes a huge amount of water. In 2021 we changed our water system building a simple but effective water recycling system for our lapidary machines. By doing so we were able to reduce our water consumption for the last three months of 2021 in 75% in comparison to the months before. The full effect of such huge water savings will be reflected in a further reduced carbon footprint by the end of 2022.

Packaging

In our wholesale branch most packaging materials (drums, cartoon boxes, paper cushioning) are reused materials, meaning we are using packaging materials from other products or companies. It does not look pretty, but it reduces the environmental impact of such materials to zero as they don´t have to be produced or even recycled. In our retail branch we are using recycled packaging.

Bubble Wrap: Crystals are products that tend to break easily, Sadly in Peru we have no access to alternative packaging materials that have the same protective success than Gemrock´s Carbon Token Whitepaper Beta v 0.1 bubble wrap, which still is the ideal material for safe packaging. Therefore bubble wrap is still not replaceable. However, we are at least trying to reduce the impact by reusing bubble wrap whenever possible, especially in our wholesale branch.

How you can help us: Nowadays there are many recycling stations all around the world that accept bubble wrap, which is a material that can be 100% recycled. Please help us reducing the environmental impact of your crystals by collecting the bubble wrap and delivering it to your nearest recycling station. Thank you.

Reusing & Recycling

Reusing is better than recycling, as recycling is an additional process of manufacturing while reusing is not. We are reusing materials whenever possible

• When moving our facility in 2020 to a new location we had to retrieve dozens of kilos of wiring from the previous company. We recovered all copper from the wiring manually and will use this copper wire for our jewelry production.

• We also reused 90% of the wood that was retrieved from the existing infrastructure when adapting it to our use.

• In our wholesale branch we are reusing packaging materials from other companies (drums, cartoon boxes, paper for cushioning). It does not look pretty but reduces the environmental impact of such materials to zero.

• Sadly there is no alternative to bubble wrap packaging that would have the same protective success. Recycled bubble wrap is not yet sold in Peru. We are trying to reduce the impact by reusing bubble wrap in our wholesale branch whenever possible. Please help us by recycling your bubble wrap packaging with your nearest recycling station.

We are constantly improving our recycling effort by collecting garbage in separate containers for glass, wood and paper, metals and other garbage. Sadly there is not yet a composting alternative for organic materials available in Lima.

Environmental Mining Impacts

No mining for Peruvian gemstones and crystals is located in the Peruvian rainforest. Most mining operations are located on the western slopes of the Andes and in the coastal desert of Peru, being one of the driest deserts on earth with very little plant or animal life to be harmed and with nearly no underground water bodies to be contaminated.

Additionally gemstone and crystal mining is not using any chemicals, with dynamite being used for underground mining being the only chemical used. Environmental impacts therefore are from a start relatively low to very low for Peruvian crystal mining operations.

In our own mining operations we are making sure that physical impacts are kept as low as possible and that all produced trash is transported out of the area.