Recycling Silver Jewelry

Just like with recycled gold, the extraction and consumption of new, finite resources is prevented with 925 recycled silver as well. Silver is already present in many production waste or no longer needed goods and can be recycled for reuse. The melting of silver can also be done without loss, making recycled silver a sustainable method to protect both people and the environment and to utilize what is already available. Since silver is usually mined together with gold, the advantages of recycled silver are clear: no miners have to expose themselves to life-threatening and health-damaging risks, and our environment is preserved. The recycling process for silver consumes 7-14 times less CO2 than newly mined silver. Additionally, recycling silver can prevent tons of toxic mining waste from entering our water, displacing communities due to mining activities, or deforesting areas that are important for our biodiversity.

Also, the 925 sterling silver that we use for our jewelry is sourced from our partner, the C Hafner refinery, using a silver recycling process. Just like with gold, we continuously collect all our silver scraps that arise during the production of our jewelry pieces through polishing, filing, or casting, and hand them over to C Hafner so that they can be melted down with other refining material into 925 sterling silver. For this, the refining material is also melted down until it homogenizes and can be cast into bars. Samples are then taken from these bars, which are quartered with lead. The lead absorbs the precious metals in the crucible, only to evaporate in the heat, leaving behind the precious metal grain. This grain is then hammered and rolled and dissolved in aqua regia so that it can be separated from other precious metals and processed as recycled 925 sterling silver into our jewelry pieces.