Playing the Long Game

Earlier this year, SJN cast a spotlight on industry leaders who are creating change in the precious metals sector from within the trade. Lead by example is an ordinary expression, but it reflects the path to change as one person’s passion ignites another’s – something that Hoover & Strong’s Dani Cutler embraces.

What We’re Facing

Topping the short list within the metals community are two key issues. The gold sector must find a means of safeguarding the environment and the inhabitants. Secondly, recycling defunct metal items into newly repurposed goods is critical to its sustainability.

Accepting the Challenge

The article “Hoover & Strong’s Dani Cutler among 3 honored by Pure Earth with 2023 Force of Nature Award” referenced Cutler, whose leadership is advancing responsible metal sourcing. While it’s a formidable task, she’s up for the challenge. Serving as H&S Marketing Manager, she encourages much needed change to ensure that metal mining is safe for those impacted. Now at H&S for over six years, she’s just reaching her stride in these vital areas, with so much yet to be accomplished.

But according to Cutler, she’s enjoying every moment of these challenges. “I get to do a little bit of everything,” Cutler reveals, “so I am always learning something new.” She inherited some of the most critical concerns within the metal trade, and she’s pressing for sustainable solutions. Prior to her joining H&S, the problem of mercury used in metal processing was just starting to be understood. “Mercury was on Hoover & Strong’s radar long before I joined the company,” she explains. “I believe the mercury in mining issue really came to light for us in the early 2000s.” At that time, organizations such as ARM (Alliance of Responsible Mining), Fairmined (an initiative connecting responsible mines with gold miners), and Fairtrade (helping to trace gold) were just getting started.”

Recycling Metals for the Win

Turns out, one challenge can spark innovations needed elsewhere, like the recycled metals niche. “So we turned to recycled precious metals,” Cutler tells us. “In 2007, we realized that there were no standards for recycled metals, so we worked with SCS Global Services to create a regulatory process which led to the SCS certification that is still used today.”

For Cutler, finding alternatives to mercury used in gold recovery strikes a personal chord. This informs her commitment to play the long game until change is realized. “Mercury has a particularly devastating effect on children living in and around the mining community,” she tells us. “But there is a lack of knowledge within the communities about these effects. As soon as parents, especially mothers, learn what mercury is doing to their children, they get involved if they can, and change begins.” With solutions available, she is committed to seeing greater change. “What really gets to me is the fact that something as simple as information and education could prevent harm but is intentionally being withheld by cartels controlling the flow of gold in and out of mining communities.”

With the knowledge of mercury’s devastating effects on regions impacted by gold mining, alternatives are being implemented to create a safer, more healthy environment. Immediate fixes are not guaranteed, yet over the next few years, the industry will witness improvements.

Alternatives that Work

Stewart Grice, VP of Mills at Hoover & Strong joins the conversation. “For alluvial gold mining there’s floatation-vibrating tables that rely on the weight of gold to separate it, as do centrifugal separation processes,” Grice points out. “For hard rock mining, the best route we see at present is the cyanide process.”

Grice says not to confuse this process with cyanide leaching, which is extremely destructive and environmentally damaging. Rather, it’s using cyanide in a controlled manner, under correct containment and disposal processes, he clarifies. “Cyanide degrades under ultra-violet light (sunlight) to become non-toxic. It is one of the ways to go. If monitored and processed correctly, this is an extremely safe way of processing hard rock ore and it’s used by a number of the Fairmined certified small scale mines.”

Start with Education

Cutler says the long term effect of educating H&S’s customer base will be better methods of processing gold while guarding the environment. “I believe an increasing number of our customers are aware of the situation, but we still have a long way to go,” she confides. Still, she’s not experiencing any push-back, and she believes most jewelers have a desire to do the right thing. “But it is a very complex and multifaceted situation, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed,” she says.

With regards to recycling metals, ongoing conversations will add clarity to this topic, Cutler notes. “There is confusion over the definition of recycled,” she points out. Simply put, recycled gold includes post-consumer or post-industrial scrap. These include dental (gold) waste, pawnshop castoffs – broken or unsold jewelry, jeweler’s bench scraps, electronic waste, or industrial scrap where the metals have clearly exhausted their original use.

Premiums for Good

To aid artisanal communities in sourcing their metals responsibly, Cutler explains that a premium is added onto the metal. “There is the premium put on responsibly sourced artisanal small-scale mined (ASM) gold.” But she stresses that a better understanding of how the premium is reinvested into the mining communities is essential. “There’s the impact of mercury but there are also broader impacts of mining to the communities and environment such as child labor, dangerous working conditions, unfair pay, plus the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest at an extraordinarily fast pace. I do not think most people understand the depth of this situation. If they did, they’d better understand the premium price of responsibly sourced material.”

A Battle Worth Waging

Cutler is clearly focused forward for the long haul. None of these situations will have swift solutions, but it’s worth staying the course. She points out that organizations like ARM and Fairmined are doing a good job of making people aware of the challenges and of offering workable alternatives.

Her support for jewelers desiring to contribute to the solution are doable. “I encourage jewelers to make Fairmined gold part of their mission,” Cutler says. “Start by adding just one collection crafted exclusively from Fairmined gold and promote the message to your customer base. We need more jewelers and consumers buying more Fairmined in order to change the mining industry.”