Green Options

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.

When I had the chance to interview Beth Gerstein, co-founder of Brilliant Earth, I first wanted to ask her how they raised the money to start the company. I figured that retailing gold, platinum and diamond jewelry had to be a capital-intensive business and thought Beth could shed light on how a green entrepreneur can convince investors that there is a large market for products that are sustainably produced.

However, I got a very different story. Brilliant Earth has been entirely boot-strapped, although that adjective doesn’t seem apt for a company that sells beautiful products, has an elegant identity system, and does business via a beautiful website.

Brilliant Earth sells conflict-free diamonds, which are mined in Canada in accordance with environmental laws as well as jewelry made of “renewed” gold and platinum, i.e., recycled metals.

Blood Diamond exposed to the movie-going masses the horrors of the diamond industry's operation in the West African country of Sierra Leone. Four West African countries, Angola, The Congo, Guinea and Sierra Leone, where the diamond trade is bloodiest, produce about 20% (PDF) of the world's rough diamonds. The growing global market for diamonds reached nearly $70 billion dollars in 2005 fueled largely by the insatiable appetite of US consumers who

[...]