Perhaps, you love wearing that diamond ring from Cartier or Mauboussin. Who doesn’t like to wear diamonds? Very few people probably. But did we ever think about the process a diamond goes through to become a beautiful necklace or bracelet at the end? Or even think about the mines these diamonds are dug from?
Our environment is not a very easy thing to regain if we lost it, and diamond mining is one of the things harming it. Each year, over 150 million carats of diamonds are extracted from the Earth through mining.
Diamond mining cannot take place without huge amounts of soil being removed and processed. Although the diamond industry tries its best to make people believe that mining has environmental benefits instead of environmental harm. But the truth is that mining is harming the environment severely.
Below is an example of “regulated diamond mining” in Canada. You just have to imagine what would the case be for unregulated diamond mines after reading it.
The greenerdiamond website mentioned ta case study of the environment impact of the Victor Mine – Canada.
Water Impacts from Canadian Victor Mine:
- 100,000 m3 of salty water will be pumped out of the pit each day into the Attawapiskat River. This is equivalent to 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools per day or 14,600 per year.
- The flow of the Nayshkatooyaow River will be decreased by at least 15%.
- A 2.6 kilometer stretch of South Granny Creek will be “moved.”
- 1.2 million m3 of muskeg, including trees and other plants, will be removed.
- River crossings may lead to siltation of rivers and creeks and impact water quality.
- Fish populations such as lake sturgeon, brook trout, walleye and whitefish may be harmed by the changes in water flow and water quality.
- Methyl mercury may be released by the dewatering of the muskeg.
Above is an example of the Environmental Impacts of the so called “Conflict Free” Canadian – Victor Mine. This is a diamond mine with some regulations…imagine what is happening in diamond mines with ZERO environmental regulations.
Land Impacts from Canadian Victor Mine:
- 2.5 million tons of rock would be processed (piled, crushed and dumped) each year.
- 28.7 million tons of rock would have been dug from the ground over the life of the mine and dumped in the surrounding area.
- The waste rock may leach chemicals, such as acids, into the surrounding water.
- The mine would sit on top of a nationally significant geological feature called a karst, which has been described as the “best developed and most extensive karst topography in Ontario.”
To read more about the wildlife impacts, click here.
Next time you wear diamonds, just remember the what you read about diamond mining, or listen carefully to someone talking about diamond mining, instead of ignoring “your planet”.
