Making Trouble

Greg Valerio

Description

Valerio, you're a natural born trouble-maker. Just make sure you make trouble for the right reasons. Expelled from secondary school with these words ringing in his ears, it took Greg Valerio a little while to find the right cause to devote his trouble-making skills to but eventually he found it. Fighting to apply fair trade standards to the jewellery business has brought him up against an industry riddled with problems. In the last fifteen years he has criss-crossed the globe, from the arctic circle of Greenland, alluvial diamond fields of Sierra Leone and equatorial gold rich rainforests of South America, in an effort to give the customer an ethically pure piece of jewellery, and to give the producers of that jewellery a fair wage and good working conditions. Along the way, he has exposed the jewellery industry's dirty secrets: pollution, child labour, criminality, exploitation, dangerous working practices and much more. And he has passionately argued his case in boardrooms, sumptuous hotels and with government officials from Antwerp to Cape Town, to say there is another way. Having been told it was impossible to have gold jewellery that could be certified as fairly traded from the mine to the shop, he achieved this in the UK. Founder of Cred Jewellery in 1996, he was awarded The Observer Ethical Award 2011 for Campaigner of the Year.

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Manufacturing
• Mining

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 24 septembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745957548
• Langue: English

Extrait

Few can claim to have precipitated fundamental change in the jewellery business, but Greg Valerio is one of those who can. As a standard bearer for the principle that ethically sourced jewellery can serve as agent for sustainable economic and social development, he has helped transform the way in which we regard ourselves and the products we produce and sell.
Gaetano Cavalieri - President of The World Jewellery Confederation
This is a fantastic story about how one man wouldn t take no for an answer, and has such a powerful vision of creating change in the gold sector.
Harriet Lamb CBE - CEO of Fairtrade International
Making Trouble is a thrilling expose of the jewellery industry from one of its inside-men. Greg Valerio exorcises the demons of capitalism and takes the bull by the horns. He unveils the ugliness of the beauty business, and exposes the dark side of the dazzle. His truth has a sting, but he also has an unflinching, contagious hope that a better world is possible. And he invites you to stir up trouble with him by making injustice less and less fashionable.
Shane Claiborne - Activist and founding member of The Simple Way, Philadelphia

Text copyright 2013 Greg Valerio This edition copyright 2013 Lion Hudson
The right of Greg Valerio to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Lion Books an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www.lionhudson.com/lion
ISBN 978 0 7459 5603 9 e-ISBN 978 0 7459 5754 8
First edition 2013
Acknowledgments
Unless otherwise stated, epigraphs are by Greg Valerio. Here : Poem Que Pasa Condoto is Greg Valerio.
Scripture quotations are from The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the USA. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover image Guardian News & Media Ltd 2011
Dedication
There are many people I should thank and who have played a part in shaping my story to date.
The people at ARM and Fairtrade for their unswerving dedication to the creation of Fairtrade gold. All those who worked for CRED over the years, who without complaining proved that full traceability in jewellery from mine to retail is possible. For Micha Jazz (Mike Morris in our story) who saw the potential in a young man when no one else did, and who remains a source of wisdom to me all these years later.
My mum and dad for putting up with me in my wayward teenage years. I caused them untold grief and parental anxiety and I hope they see it turned out all right in the end.
And of course to Ruth, my wife, and my two daughters, Mali-Grace and Jemba-May, who let me travel to the remotest parts of the world, were constant in their belief of success, and remain a harbour of peace, tranquillity, and endless fun. I love you to the stars and back.
CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

GLOSSARY

END NOTE TO CONSUMERS

NOTES

PHOTOGRAPHIC INSERT
FOREWORD

It is not easy combining campaigning, running a business, having a family, and being cursed with a conscience that won t allow you to turn a blind eye to the obvious stupidity that so often stares us in the face.
Greg Valerio has battled through the whole process indomitably from the jungles of Colombia and the metal workshops of Jaipur to the emerging ruby veins newly exposed by the retreating ice sheet in Greenland. He is the pioneer of fair trade jewellery and a true hero.
Campaigning is all about creating the alternative, offering a solution. When I first discovered the toxic impact that pesticides used in the fashion industry s cotton supply chain was having on the farmers and the workers in the cotton fields, I would go to trade fairs asking for organic cotton, only to be treated to their looks of blank incredulity and vacant expressions of mild amusement at my eccentricity. Why should we do it, since you are the only one asking for it? they said, which was pretty shocking. The industry was ignorant but even when it knew, it didn t care.
Pesticides are a curse; just look at what neonicotinoids are doing to our precious bees and pollinators.
In conventional agriculture, 10,000 people die every year from accidental pesticide poisoning, and a further million are hospitalized. Pesticides create long-term contamination of the aquifer and microbiological death in soil, leading to desertification.
In one area of India there have been 250,000 suicides due to pesticide debt. Yet there is an alternative: farmers can increase their profits by between 50 to 500 per cent by farming organically with specific crop rotation, allowing them to feed and clothe their families, educate their children, and afford health care, which isn t the case for most cotton farmers right now.
We have to care. A civilization falls apart when its citizens stop caring about their fellow men. It s why we are here. There is a mistranslation in Genesis 1 - dominion should read partnership , guardianship , control . We are responsible for looking after life on earth and the planet we have been given.
The kind of world we have allowed to happen is a mess we are going to leave our children. I for one don t want to live in a world that ignores the consequences of its consumptive demands, or a political landscape where large industries and government that they own are allowed to wreak havoc with our human rights, democracy, and the future of our planet.
How We Consume Decides the Future of the Planet says a T-shirt I made for CRED. It s true. Voting with our wallets is the most immediate democratic impact the average citizen has. Informed consumers, asking for sustainable product and not buying products because they were concerned about where they came from or how they were made, have driven the clothing industry to improve its supply chain in some cases. Incredibly, by itself it would have done nothing.
It s hard, changing things. You need to be determined, persevering, and have a tireless compassion for humanity, optimism, and a firm belief that we can make a better world.
Greg has been extraordinarily dogged in his quest for the ugly truth that is behind the global jewellery business. The status quo is untenable. Consumers don t want a wedding ring that has been responsible for 3 tonnes of persistent toxic waste (mercury, cyanide) that kills all the fish down stream and poisons the local drinking water that has paid for AK47s and funded the brutalization of women and children in the Congo.
It might just be that the road to securing fair trade gold is a step toward saving our future. Sustainable supply chains are the only long-term, viable economic development model. But what is for sure is that it has informed consumers and shown an entire industry what is wrong with the rest of the luxury jewellery business.
Consumers reading this book, and their concerns being reflected in their buying patterns, are going to change the face of jewellery sourcing forever.
Well done, Greg.

Katharine Hamnett, CBE
Fashion designer and campaigner
CHAPTER ONE

Valerio, you re a natural-born troublemaker.

Oh no!
There was a shout of utter despair from the next room. I rushed in to see my wife, Ruth, standing next to an ironing board, iron in hand, her blue silk dress laid out on the board. She had a look of complete anguish on her face.
What s wrong? I asked.
I ve burned a hole into my dress for tonight s ceremony.
I guessed this was not the best moment to see the funny side of life.
Ruth had burned an iron-shaped hole the size of the palm of her hand through the dress at the top of her left thigh. We tried desperately to work out how, in the next ten minutes, we could resolve the problem. After a few frantic phone calls to anyone we thought would be able to help, we came to the realization that we did not know many people in Willesden, north London. Ruth would have to attend the ceremony in the offending dress and wander around with her left hand strategically placed over the hole. Thankfully, she was beginning to see the amusing side of it.
As we arrived at the Natural History Museum, I became increasingly aware of what a big event this really was. The Observer Ethical Awards ceremony recognizes the myriad of British ethical and campaign talent in the UK. I was up for Campaigner of the Year, against the amazing Avaaz network, whose online campaigning could muster millions of global signatures on a particular issue in a matter of hours, and the indomitable Greenpeace, whose direct action campaigning has been the inspiration of generations as they have fought for a more sustainable planet.
My work in securing certified fair trade gold from the hands of small-scale miners and to promote full transparency and traceability throughout the jewellery supply chain had come to the attention of Lucy Siegle, the BBC ethical broadcaster and Guardian columnist, whose job it was to host the annual awards.
As we arrived I was greeted by the CRED Jewellery staff and the Fairtrade Foundation people who I had worked with so closely to secure fair trade gold, and also Ameriko Mosquera, the Oro Verd ecological gold miner from Choc , Colombia, whom I had first met in 2004. It was this meeting that had created the spark that would eventually lead to the creation of fair trade gold, and it was fitting that he was with us for the evening.