Why shop vegan jewellery?
Whether you choose to shop vegan/ cruelty-free because you can’t stand the idea of animals suffering needlessly or the environmental impact …or like us all of the above, we have you covered.
Jewellery isn't the first industry you think of when considering if a product is vegan or non-vegan, but you might be surprised by how many animal products are used. While it’s easy to spot when the jewellery is made from animal products such as leather, pearls, horn, shells, wool …etc. there are lots of other animal products used in the production of jewellery. Beeswax is used as a lubricant, polishes and glues are often derived from shellac (crushed bugs), stearic acid (fatty acids often derived from animals), gelatine (from animal bone, skin and cartilage) to name a few. Animal products are also used in workshop equipment, with aprons, gloves, bench skins, sandbags, brushes, polishers and mallets often made from animal skin and hair. The reality is there just is no need for any of this suffering; all of these can be swapped out easily with cruelty free sustainable products.
To focus on just one of these products, beeswax, which is often seen as natural and sustainable. However the queen bee having her wings cut off so she cannot leave her colony and being artificially inseminated to produce more worker bees, doesn’t sound sustainable or cruelty free to us. For balance, there are beekeepers who do treat bees far better, but with the decline in the number of bees and the impact on our ecosystems, we need the bees to pollinate trees and plants. At erj, we choose to leave them to it and use much kinder alternatives, so instead of beeswax we use fair trade soy wax or coconut oil.
As a vegan business (and personally being a vegan for 15+ years) I know how important it is to have this confidence, and you can be 100% confident with any jewellery out of the erj workshop will be 100% vegan and cruelty-free. It’s something we care passionately about, and not just some greenwashing buzz words. Are any of us perfect? No, but for us avoiding cruelty it’s a step in the right direction
Further reading about vegan and sustainable jewellery
