【Paris, Franc】Second-Hand Diamonds: The Eco-Friendly Alternative to Precious Stone Extraction?

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Editor’s Note

This article explores how some jewelers are turning to recycled materials to address the ethical and environmental concerns of mining, highlighting one brand’s commitment to sustainable luxury.

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The Ethics Behind Diamond Extraction

Since 2019, the jewelry house Héloïse & Abélard has offered permanent collections whose pieces are made from second-hand gold and diamonds. This practice reduces the ecological impact of extraction and international flows, while also limiting the social repercussions, as these materials were extracted decades or even centuries ago.

For nearly ten years, Héloïse Schapiro, the founder, worked on Place Vendôme among the finest luxury houses. Specializing in marketing and collection development, she witnessed exponential growth in the jewelry segment, which over the years began to raise questions for her.

“For me, a diamond is a rare material. It is passed down, reused, and above all, there aren’t millions available every ten months,”

details the founder.

“However, all the collective imagination that once existed around this stone was completely excluded from the processes and practices of the houses I worked for.”

Faced with this issue of increasing volumes and, by extension, massive stone extraction, the founder, deeply concerned about the human and environmental cost of this material, realized how opaque the production mechanism remained, even at her level.

“After a while, I was faced with too many questions,”

she laments.

Another triggering event finally convinced Héloïse Schapiro to leave her job and launch a more ethical project aligned with her personal aspirations: the sudden loss of her mother. At thirty and in the midst of career development, she reconnected with her family history through the jewelry she inherited—pieces of high sentimental value that she nonetheless found difficult to wear.

“I wanted to wear them, but the styles were no longer really current, so the only option available to me was to go to an independent jeweler to have them adapted. But nothing guaranteed that this person would be creative, so I was a bit stuck,”

recalls Héloïse Schapiro.

Shortly after this event, the Parisian used a convalescence period to solidify her project, left her job a few months later, and founded the brand Héloïse & Abélard in November 2019.

“We didn’t invent anything,”

states the director.

“Diamond recycling, everyone does it. However, doing it on repetitive models that you can order online and that are always at a fixed price, that’s innovative.”
A Business Model Based on No Inventory

The founder, who had never designed a piece of jewelry in her life, imagined her first pieces herself and developed the company on two fronts. First, the sale of jewelry entirely made from recycled gold and diamonds. Second, an offer allowing customers to integrate their own stones into an existing model—a segment that requires some customer education.

“When people bring us their stones, they sometimes imagine that we will produce a piece of jewelry for them at a lower cost because a large part of the raw material is already provided. But it doesn’t work like that! So we have to remind them how we create a piece of jewelry, how long it takes, and also recall the manufacturing steps, namely disassembly, cleaning, and stone expertise. All of this has value,”

details the director.

And while jewelry creation is certainly an important part of the project, it is the purchase of second-hand stones that represents the core activity of Héloïse & Abélard. A task the director handled personally at the start of the company and has gradually delegated to her new collaborators.

“Today we have a whole address book of independent jewelers, antique dealers, or manufacturing workshops that we activate daily to build a stock of stones that all meet defined dimensions and qualities. That’s how we assure our customers a certain level of quality.”

In this economic model around the recycling of gold and diamonds, there is a fundamental principle: you cannot have inventory.

“If my challenge is to recycle, there is no point in me keeping reserves in my safe. So we developed unit production. A process that is not at all common in regular commerce, but which guarantees us to have no waste.”

Americans are major consumers of diamonds. Moreover, they are extremely sensitive to ecological issues, particularly in the diamond sector, which has evolved profoundly since the release of the film *Blood Diamond* in 2006.

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⏰ Published on: December 08, 2023