David H. Fell & Co. is proud to announce that we have achieved the SCS Recycled Content Standard V7-0 for 100% Recycled Platinum, Fine Gold, Fine Silver, and Sterling Silver content!

We are very excited to announce that we have achieved the SCS Recycled Content Standard V7-0 for 100% Recycled Platinum, Fine Gold, Fine Silver, and Sterling Silver content. SCS is a leader in third-party environmental and sustainability certification. Its Recycled Content Certification Program helps manufacturers demonstrate their commitment to conserving natural resources, supply chain transparency, support of corporate sustainability goals, and eliminating the risk of money laundering. SCS Recycled Standard V7-0 is a chain of custody standard that tracks recycled raw materials through the supply chain. Each stage of the production cycle is certified, and participants are subject to document collection and on-site visits. This third-party audited standard means we have had to prove our sourcing and production methods to an outside auditor.

Why did we go through this rather time-consuming and expensive process? Because we believe it is important to consumers—and therefore, to you—to know where their materials come from. While simple, unaudited claims were sufficient in the past, today’s consumer wants to trust but verify, and these SCS certifications do just that.

In the interests of full transparency, it is important for people to understand that “recycled” includes both post-consumer and post-industrial metals. Post-consumer content is metal that was mined, refined, turned into jewelry or other metal objects, sold to end users, then returned to the supply chain to be recycled.

Post-industrial recycling is defined as materials that become waste during a manufacturing process. For example, this could be metal that David H. Fell & Co. sells to a manufacturer. If the metal is used in their production process, and they produce scrap during that process, the scrap can be sent back to be recycled.

Another example of this is investment gold, which may have gone from the mine to a refiner to a financial institution … where it sat until sold. To change it from bars or coins to something useful for jewelry producers it must go through processing, and that qualifies it as “recycled.”

At DH Fell, we understand that differentiating between post-consumer and post-industrial recycling is a point of concern for companies investing in responsibility initiatives. But every time we reuse materials — whether post-consumer or post-industrial — we are still making a meaningful contribution to reducing mining’s effects on the environment and decreasing the health risks and human rights violations that can be associated with mining.”

The other big benefit of receiving the SCS recycling certification is that you can be confident that the metal we sell you has not been used for money laundering. The most common way for illegally mined gold to make it to market is to be mixed in with legally mined gold at a refinery point, which masks its illicit origins and funds the illegal miners. As an SCS certified organization, our supply chain has been and will continue to be audited. We are committed to ensuring that the type of mining that is currently causing so much damage in the Amazon or which is being used to fund drug cartels, armed militias and terrorists is not coming into our refinery and being turned into legitimate metal. 

The David H. Fell & Co. team is excited (and proud!) to have achieved this important milestone. We are committed to being ethical, responsible members of our community and our industry, and going the extra mile for SCS certification is an important way of putting our money and our energy in service of our intentions.