Today I received an order of silver that I had made a huge mistake ordering. I was in a rush to get back to Maebh and putting the order through quickly and I ordered standard sterling silver rather than the recycled sterling ecosilver I usually use. It was a decent bit of metal too probably the next two months worth of stock 🙁 I nearly cried!
I phoned my supplier to ask about swapping it and as I was expecting to be honest, I was told that most of it would then be melted down before being resold as it was cut to my measurements. I would get scrap value losing about 50% of the value and perfectly good silver would have to be refined again with all the inherent wasted energy. So to truly be able to say I am using eco silver over the next 2 months I would be wasting energy in terms of delivery back to the refinery, and then the refining energy and I admit I would be quite a bit out of pocket too. I don’t really think thats the environmentally friendly answer. I could of course have not said anything, and just continued on, but that feels wrong and I always want to try my best to be honest and transparent! So I’m sorry!
So what I have decided is, I will use this metal, and since it is cheaper then I would have paid for the ecosilver, I will for April and May, donate 15% of my silver sales from here and 10% of my silver sales from etsy to an environmental charity, and I’m going to choose Extinction Rebellion to donate to in April and Friends of the Earth in May.
Also I do still have some eco silver in stock and I will keep that aside, so if it is important to you that your piece is made from ecosilver then I can do that please just message me and let me know.
It’s not a perfect solution but it’s the best I can come up with, I don’t believe in greenwashing I want to honestly do the best I can and strive here and on my ethics page and across social media to be as transparent as possible. I hope you understand.
And because spring is here, here’s a photo of a bee on my comfrey last year
