Modern in Diamond Rings

Ethical Supply Chain Innovation

Clearly, the lack of traceability is a concern to the end customer as it’s not clear that the diamond was obtained ethically. Good news: this is changing!

The term “blood diamonds” refer to the blood that’s been shed to extract the gemstone for it to then go through a company’s production processes finally landing oh so elegantly onto a client’s finger, earlobe, neck, or arm.

Modern Thinkers seek to wear their values and know that there is power in their wallets.

Yet, just because a brand mentions the term “ethical” on their website does not mean it authentically practices ethically sourcing of their diamonds.

Enter Haelixa. This company does something incredible. During her PhD, founder Michela Puddu developed a chemical engineering method to sustainably apply DNA-markers onto materials at their source. The benefit is that when scanning the material, the traces become known to the person seeking this information.

A few years ago (2019), I met with Michela Puddu in person at the ETH lab in Zürich. There is one particular thing she told me that still rings in the back of my mind. This is what she said:

Supply chains are opaque, but Haelixa brings clarity as transparent as clear water.

I can’t wait to see how lab-grown diamonds will be marked with the Haelixa technology (not sure if this is already discussed internally, but I think it’d be a great move).

Read the full article: The Modern Thinker