Why We Use Recycled Gold
Most of the gold ever mined is still in circulation. It is in old wedding bands at the back of drawers. It is in bullion. It is in computer chips, dental crowns, the broken chain of a great-aunt that has never been fixed. Gold is one of the few materials humans have made that we have never really thrown away.
This is the practical case for using recycled gold, and it is the basis for everything Eloise Falkiner is made from. But "recycled" is a word that has become slippery in jewellery, and we want to be honest about what it does and does not mean. Especially when you are spending thousands of dollars on a ring you intend to wear for the rest of your life.
What recycled gold actually is
Recycled gold is gold that has been refined from existing material , old jewellery, electronics, dental scrap, manufacturing offcuts, bullion , rather than freshly extracted from the earth.
In practice, the recycling process is simple and chemical: existing gold items are melted, the impurities are separated out, and what remains is pure gold, indistinguishable in chemistry or appearance from gold mined yesterday. This is then alloyed back to the karat the jeweller wants, 18k, 9k, white gold, rose gold, by adding silver, copper, or other metals as needed.
Gold does not degrade with recycling. A wedding band from 1962, melted down and recast, makes gold every bit as good as gold from a mine. This is unusual among materials. It is part of why gold has been valuable for so long.
Why this matters
The mining of new gold has a footprint that is uncomfortable to read about and harder to defend.
Cyanide and mercury are still used in much of the world's gold extraction, despite cleaner alternatives existing. Mining communities, particularly in parts of South America, Africa, and Asia, bear costs that the buyer of a ring in Melbourne never sees.
This is not a guilt-trip. Gold mining is also a livelihood for millions of people, and a blanket condemnation of all mining is too simple. But there is more gold in circulation than the world currently needs, and choosing predominantly recycled gold means choosing not to add to the mining footprint when there is an alternative.
What we use, and where it comes from
Every Eloise Falkiner ring is made from 100% recycled metals. This includes the gold in the band, the prongs, the bezel, the bail of a pendant, every visible and structural piece of metal.
When you commission a ring with us, we can also work with family gold: an old ring, a chain, a piece of inherited jewellery that you bring to us. This becomes part of your new piece , sometimes literally melted into the band, sometimes alloyed into the casting batch. Not all designs can be achieved using your recycled metals however so please don’t hesitate to confirm with us. Many of the pieces we are most proud of carry gold that is older than the people wearing it.
What we don't claim
This is the part of the conversation that often gets skipped, and we think it shouldn't be.
We don't claim recycled gold is perfectly sustainable. Refining recycled gold still uses energy, chemicals, and water. The footprint is significantly smaller than new mining, but it is not zero. Honesty matters.
We don't claim recycled gold has a fully traceable origin. A bar of recycled gold has, by definition, come from many different original sources , a chain from one decade, dental scrap from another, electronics from somewhere else. The chemistry is identical to mined gold; the original provenance is no longer recoverable. Anyone telling you their recycled gold has a single traceable story is either selling you something specific (like family gold, where the story is known) or being optimistic.
The case for choosing this
If you are buying a ring you intend to wear for fifty years, a small amount of attention to where the metal came from is not too much to ask. It is not a moral high ground, it is a practical question, like asking what something is made of and how it was made.
Recycled gold is not a magic solution. It is a sensible default. It uses what is already here. It avoids what is genuinely harmful. It does not pretend to be more than it is.
That, for us, is enough of a reason.
