Some Crystal Wholesalers and Retailers try to distract from the dirty secrets of the crystal industry by making a scapegoat of industrial mining, blaming it for all the negative environmental and human rights impacts. At the same time, they falsely glorify artisan crystal mining. However, ethical mining is not about artisan vs. industrial mining.

TIME TO SPEAK OUT:

Stefan Austermühle, CEO Gemrock Peru,                  Last updated: 01.03.2025

The Crystal Myth Buster:

Artisan vs. Industrial Mining

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As an insider in the crystal industry, a professional gem cutter, and biologist with a 40-year career in nature conservation with extensive experience in the mining issues of South America, particularly in Peru, I find it extremely frustrating to witness how crystal scammers, copy-paste marketers, and unethical dealers mislead their clients about the realities of mining. They paint a distorted picture that makes ethical crystal mining seem impossible, and it’s time to expose the truth.

The most common strategy of these misleading sellers is to confuse the public by creating a smokescreen fight of artisan vs. industrial mining. They make a scapegoat of industrial mining, blaming it for all the negative environmental and human rights impacts. At the same time they falsely glorify artisan crystal mining, trying to downplay the negative impacts of the global crystal industry.

Let’s break this down:

Understanding Industrial Mining

One false claim often made is industrial mines would sell crystals as by-products but not disclose the sale, making it hard to know where the stones come from.

Claims like the one above are pure fantasy, at best based on total lack of knowledge of the global mining industry. Here is why:

Massive Investment and  Complex Operations

Industrial mining projects are multi-million-dollar operations that require massive investments, often hundreds of millions of dollars. They are financed by shareholders, international banks, and sometimes even governments. These large-scale projects are focused on extracting precious metals like gold, silver, rare earth minerals, or industrial metals like for example copper, iron, or zinc.

To begin an industrial mining project, companies must go through rigorous processes. These include:

• Extensive environmental impact studies,
• Social impact assessments,
• Archeological studies,
• Obtaining permits for dynamite handling, mine closure plans, waste treatment, and many more.

And most importantly they must gain approval from the local population.

In some countries, securing all necessary permits can take up to ten years before a project can even begin operations. In most countries, large-scale mining projects need to share part of their profits with local and regional governments and they often have extensive community programs supporting local communities where governments fail.

Industrial Mining Does Not Target Crystals:

Contrary to what some dealers suggest, no industrial mining company would stop its machinery for a crystal that might be found during extraction.

The huge machinery involved in industrial mining is not designed to preserve delicate items like crystals. In fact, the increasing mechanization of mining has led to fewer high-quality crystals being found in modern mining operations, as any crystals uncovered are ground into dust by the machinery.

So, any claim industrial mines would sell crystals as a byproduct is basically nonsense

While it’s true that industrial mining has caused environmental damage in the past, modern regulations have drastically improved these practices.

Today, industrial mining companies are required to adhere to stringent environmental safeguards.

I am not saying industrial mining is perfect, but it is a fact that modern current operations do comply to an infinitely higher level with environmental safeguards than a few decades ago. In fact, there are many old, abandoned mines that operated and closed decades ago and continue to contaminate the environment because their mining waste was not properly treated or discarded in the past.

The Exeption: Disaster Zones:

Of course, there are well-known instances of human rights violations and environmental destruction, such as diamond mining in Africa or ruby mining in Myanmar.

But these cases often occur in conflict zones, where human rights violations, genocide, corruption, and lawlessness prevail.

These disastrous situations are not representative of the majority of mining operations around the world.

By targeting high-value gemstones like diamonds, rubies, sapphires, or jade, those mining operations neither can be compared with the overwhelming number of crystals and crystal mining.

Crystals and Industrial Mining: Two Different Worlds

It is not about artisan vs. industrial mining. It’s essential to understand that crystal mining is very different from industrial mining.

The commercial value of crystal specimens is by far too low to justify the capital investment required for setting up a mining company.

Even if you would do so, crystals appear in small amounts, often in isolated pockets. They can appear or disappear from one day to the other, which is why its impossible to financially sustain a permanent mining operation targeting crystals.

In fact, 90% of crystal mining is done on a much smaller, artisanal scale, where individual miners use handheld tools, sledgehammers or sometimes dynamite to extract rough crystals from the earth. These miners are not part of an organized company; they operate independently or in small groups. In some rare cases, heavy machinery is used, but this is the exception, not the norm.

The real Environmental Damage: Artisan Mining

While industrial mining is often blamed for environmental destruction, the truth is that overall the falsely glorified artisan mining is much worse. Let’s take a closer look at the realities of artisanal mining, particularly in countries like Peru.

Illegal and Unregulated

In Peru, there are approximately 300,000 artisanal miners, but fewer than 20,000 are officially registered with the mining ministry.

Many of these miners are operating illegally, digging in protected areas or on land they do not own, without any environmental or safety regulations.

No Safety, No Regulations

Artisan miners lack any form of protection or support from government agencies. They often work under dangerous conditions, using hand tools and explosives without proper safety measures. These miners are not required to comply with labor laws, and they do not offer benefits or fair wages to their workers.

When an area no longer yields profitable materials, or when the mine shafts are so deep that they require investment in safety structures to be operated these miners abandon their operations and leave behind environmental damage, waste and contaminated soil. Unlike large-scale industrial projects, there are no systems in place for waste management or reclamation once the mining is finished.

Devastating Environmental Impact

Illegal artisanal gold mining in Peru has been responsible for the massive destruction of the Amazon rainforest, as miners use mercury to separate gold from ore, which poisons rivers, drinking water, and local communities.

The environmental toll is devastating—rivers are poisoned, forests are destroyed, and wildlife is decimated.

Where once was one of the most biodiverse habitats on earth they leave behind a moonlike landscape of waterfilled craters that can only be compared to the frontline trenches between France and Germany in the First World War.

Artisanal crystal mining, while not as large-scale as gold mining, still has a significant negative environmental impact. Given the lack of regulation, these miners do not take responsibility for their environmental footprint.

At least from our reality in Peru and South America, there cannot be any doubt that artisan crystal mining is entirely unethical, mostly illegal, destroys the environment, and never benefits communities. Still, as there is money to be made, communities themselves are often involved in artisan mining and the destruction of their own environment.

Any crystal dealer wanting to make you believe that it is about artisan vs. industrial mining and that artisan mining is better than industrial mining, either is uniformed himself or lies about the reality he knows.

Why Ethical Crystal Mining is Not Only Possible but Essential

The reality is that ethical crystal mining is both possible and achievable, even though many crystal businesses claim it’s not.

Crystal dealers (wholesale or retail) who insist that ethical mining and lapidary are impossible are the ones who benefit most from the current shadow business and lawlessness and have not wanted to change the way they have done business for decades.

In fact, they do not care about communities, workers, or the environment but try to defend their unethical mode of operation, based on nothing else but greed.

At Gemrock, we are proving that it is not only possible, but it’s also easier than most people believe.

Here’s how we do it to be ethical:

1.) Responsible Sourcing: We ensure that all our rough crystals come from legal sources. We require official electronic invoices from our suppliers, ensuring that they comply with tax and legal regulations. We pay only via bank wire, making all financial operations visible to the government. No illegal miner would accept such conditions, and they would never be able to provide the proper documentation.

2.) Supporting Legal Mining and Lapidary Operations: We work closely with our suppliers to help them transition from informal shadow businesses to formal businesses, teaching them about labor rights and legal practices. It’s a long process, but we’re seeing success year after year, as we help companies become legal and ethical.

3.) Fair Labor Practices: All our crystal products are made in-house by skilled workers who are trained in-house and employed under fair labor conditions. We pay competitive wages and offer long-term contracts with full benefits, ensuring our workers are safe and compensated well.

4.) Legal compliance: As a legal company we are supervised by the tax office, the municipality, the labor authorities, the customs officials, and the mining ministry. So naturally we do comply with all legal requirements of our industry.

5.) Environmental Stewardship: At Gemrock, we’ve implemented a variety of initiatives to minimize our environmental impact. From reducing water use and recycling waste to using eco-friendly packaging, we take our environmental responsibilities seriously.

6.) Carbon neutral: We are most likely the world’s only crystal company that has actually measured its carbon footprint, and we set an adequate percentage of our product price aside to finance a tree-planting initiative that converts our crystal products and jewelry into the world’s first carbon neutral crystal products.

7.) Transparency: We believe in complete transparency. All our business practices, including our environmental efforts and ethical sourcing, are clearly outlined in detail on our website. We also provide official governmental documents to back up our claims.

The Bottom Line: Ethical Crystal Mining is The Future

Gemrock’s experience demonstrates that ethical crystal mining and lapidary practices are not only possible — they are easier to implement than many businesses want you to believe.

The truth is, that companies that claim ethical practices aren’t feasible are either uninformed or, more likely, don’t care to change their profit-driven, unethical operations.

We are changing the system from within, one crystal at a time.

If we can do it, there’s no reason other crystal businesses around the world can’t follow suit. If they don’t, it’s because they don’t care.

By supporting ethical practices, you are making a difference — not just for the environment and workers, but for the future of the crystal industry.

The choice is yours.

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