The Earthbeat Foundation

At Maren Jewellery, we use exclusively recycled gold. This means that we have chosen not to use newly mined gold. However, to still support projects that promote alternatives to gold mining, we donate 3% of our annual profit to the Earthbeat Foundation.

The Earthbeat Foundation was founded in 2012 with a clearly defined goal: according to the Earthbeat Foundation, the team led by founder Guya Merkle aims to support the legal, safe, sustainable, and environmentally responsible handling of the raw material gold and to end new gold mining. After all, gold mining can have significant social and environmental impacts – and that is truly hard to accept. That is why the initiative formulated a guiding principle to underpin its work: “Strengthen the circular economy to conserve natural resources and thus secure the basis of life for future generations.” A vision that we at Maren Jewellery also want to support!

How can gold mining be brought into harmony with nature and people? circular economyt to strengthen means thaturban mining to force, i.e. the extraction of gold from old electronic devices or the recycling of old gold in order to let it migrate back into the production cycle, so that the new mining of gold becomes superfluous in the long term.

But: What happens to all the people who work in the gold mines when gold no longer needs to be mined? The

The Earthbeat Foundation is committed to supporting the estimated 80 million people whose livelihoods depend on mining work through a 5-goal plan, offering them a new livelihood.

The former, abandoned mine sites are repurposed to enable new uses, households are strengthened to ensure a moderate income level, investments are made in new local income opportunities so that self-sufficient, independent livelihoods can be established, educational opportunities are promoted to give people a foundation on which they can build their new lives in an empowered way, and the community is supported to enable shared learning.

We are happy to do a little interview with the founder of the Earthbeat Foundation to give her the chance to present her vision.

Photo: Eric Freeden

When I was in Peru to look at conventional small gold mining mines, I realized relatively quickly that I didn't want to accept it like that. It was one thing with the label of using ethically correct resources. However, I knew that that would not be enough.

As an industry, we have to change something together and that's why I wanted to found an initiative that can make this possible. If you focus on urban mining, that's great and, in my opinion, also the future, but you still have to work where the problems are greatest, and these are the communities that depend on gold mining. That's why I wanted to create alternatives to gold mining and give the whole thing a form that everyone from the industry can take part in.

That always depends on the community. We do not see our work as classic development aid, but as a partnership with the local people. You decide what you would like to build. Most of the time, these are areas that already exist but cannot be professionalized without a strong partner at your side. This is how the beekeeping project came about in the pilot project in Uganda. People had already tried their hand at beekeeping, it just didn't want to work properly. With the foundation as a partner, they were able to do professional training, set up more beehives and also sell the honey they produced.

That we manage to handle the raw material gold so consciously that we can actually only obtain it from urban mining. Enough gold has been mined, we just need to change the way we deal with it and apply it in a circular way. Gold is always gold and cannot be used up. I would wish that we could manage to think more about sharing this raw material. Of course we have to ensure that people who have been employed in gold mining for lack of alternatives can create sustainable and long-term sources of income.