The possibilities of plant-based jewellery
Jewellery made from plants or waste are appearing at all price points. We look at the creative possibilities offered by plant-based materials and how waste could be gain a second life as shiny adornments.
Gems from potatoes
New York bioplastic jewellery brand Mo.Na Gems is winning over the youth market to renewable design with their colourful earrings and keyrings.
Their creations are irresistible for their gummy bear translucence, a surface that mimics the plastic resin that dominates the lower-cost end of the jewellery market. Despite their appearance, Mo.Na Gems’ luminous little ‘gemstones’ are made not from oil plastic but entirely from a compostable formula that uses potato starch. The material was formulated in 2021 by co-founders Mia Dunn and Mecca McDonald in their Johns Hopkins dorm kitchens.
Anticipating criticisms about non-biodegradable bioplastics, the brand proudly showcases the nature-friendly credentials of their starchy gems. Photos on Mo.Na’s website show their precious bio-gems disintegrating after several weeks in the backyard compost.
Recent media commentary on the demise of ESG ring hollow when it comes to Mo.Na’s consumer base. The brand regales their fans with Instagram posts aimed at an ecologically and socially conscious younger generation, reflecting on the ties between fashion and economic inequality, capitalism and sustainability.
Now a cult hit brand with a growing following, the company showcases the possibilities of biomaterials within mass-produced fashion goods. By conquering the fashion-conscious youth market for affordable jewels, Mo.Na Gems is promoting the cause of bioplastics more broadly. Its self-professed mission is to make ‘bioplastics look sexy’ among its Gen Z cohort. Their marketing strategies for doing so are as fun as their poppy pieces, like their ‘Galentine’ make-your-own charm event in Brooklyn this past February.
Finnish bio-jewellery
Mo.Na is one of the most innovative new biobased jewellery makers on the scene. More than simply greening the market for kitsch consumables, they are loading a relatively unfamiliar material with rich cultural meanings – something that is essential if renewable fashion materials are to capture the public’s imagination.
While Mo.Na targets the affordable fashion segment, circular and biobased options are catching on within every market. We see this in the work of Kalevala Koru, a Finnish company that designs, makes and markets jewellery. Recently, they released the Nolla collection of biobased earrings that chief designer Taru Harmaala Chaloff says was inspired by the endangered meadow flowers of her native country.
While Mo.Na’s jewels resemble pick ‘n’ mix, Kalevala Koru are distinctly more understated. The delicately minimalist designers of the Nolla collection earrings consist of two interlocking disks, each made from a new, Finnish-made bioplastic that uses hemp, sugarcane, and fava bean. Brightplus is the company behind the new material. The dyes that colour the disks are also minimally processed, made from woad blue, soot black, and green from metal oxide. The silver parts are made entirely of recycled silver.
Conscious consumption
More than ever, jewellery buyers are basing purchasing choices based on what they know about the social and environmental impacts of supply chain. Mining, extraction, and smelting precious metals often come with huge costs for the environment and local communities and more buyers are attuned to this.
Yet precious metal and gemstone supply chains are also often opaque, crossing continents and legal jurisdictions in ways that make them difficult to track and regulate. This leaves consumers with little choice but to trust certification agencies that some have argued remain closely entwined with the jewellery industry.
Mined gems are not the only jewellery components that can be environmentally damaging, with plastic being another common culprit that raises the negative impacts of the fashion jewellery segment.
Finally, there are traditional biobased materials that humans have worn since the very beginnings. Many of the oldest jewels derived from animals, yet designers today are keen to look beyond traditional sources of biobased adornments. When a few types of material become coveted as luxury items, demand can feed damaging practices such as artificial pearl farming causing ecosystem imbalances or the illegal ivory trade. The ability to draw on a wider array of renewables is the key to building a more sustainable industry.
For these reasons, creators are turning to the possibilities of unexpected biomaterials for jewellery, especially those that are locally sourced. A recent study in Nature discusses how, over its entire life-cycle, biomaterials-based jewellery can emit lower levels of carbon and use up much less water than their mined counterparts. This is partly because the renewable materials need less heat (and therefore energy) in their processing.
There is evidence that these life-cycle stats matter for consumers. A global survey of 8,400 people across seven key consumer markets for diamonds found sustainability was a key deciding factor in purchases, with 60 percent of consumers and more than 80 per cent of opinion leaders who influence decisions of friends and family having chosen a product made in a more environmentally or socially responsible way. We are also seeing surging interest in upcycled and circular options.
Pineapple trumps plastics
Bioplastics are an obvious candidate to replicate the sheen, shine, and vibrant colour of cut gemstones in jewellery. Yet fibrous plants also have a role in creating wearable pieces.
Pressed fibre from pineapple leaves, for example, can create durable bangles that replace plastic ones. Other fibrous plants – sansevieria, ramie, abaca – are similar in their structural properties, ideal for being worked into biobased filigree, which is a type of metalwork that features flowy and intricate shapes. Malta’s Bartoart is one jewellery designer experimenting with the possibilities of these, inlaying copper with the intricate, lace-like structures found inside the prickly pear cactus.
Nature abounds in fibrous plants that offer new design possibilities for jewellery. Some of these are well-suited for the mechanical components of jewellery: latches, bands, hooks. There are bamboo charcoal-infused polymers that could be durable elements in jewellery components. Agricultural residues can both be worked into diverse materials with an array of aesthetic and mechanical properties.
London’s circular luxury
London-based Oushaba makes luxury jewellery from e-waste. The results are spectacular reminders of the creative potential locked up in waste materials destined to leach toxic chemicals in a landfill. Oushaba’s ‘Constellation’ necklace is a fine example of this, a sumptuous gold pendant made from a totem-like piece of circuit board.
At £14, 500, the ‘Constellation’ necklace is out of reach for most. Yet more affordable circular pieces are available from another sustainable jewellery brand based in London. Charlotte Padgham’s circular metals are her main material, working cast-off silver and gold into earrings and rings that flow in sculptural, lava-like belts. Her SKINS collection, all the precious stones have been damaged and discarded cast-offs from the industry or from accidental breakage.
Padgham’s commitment to circularity and sustainability go beyond her gems and metals work: she also uses sustainably sourced biodegradable materials in her packaging, including cellophane envelopes made from corn-starch, recycled card backing, and filler material hand-shredded from deliveries to her studio. There is a biobased consistency through her brand that suggests how a growing industry in sustainable jewellery could simultaneously bolster demand for other areas of the bioeconomy, including packaging, adhesives, and inks.
New materials, new designs
Jewelry made from minerals is still highly prized in many cultures. Yet it’s also clear that biobased and renewable materials have been at the centre of fashion for millennia: think pearls, coral, and ivory. The future of sustainable design will depend on makers willing to experiment with new kinds of renewable materials, working them so that they can replicate the intricacy and allure of traditional jewellery.
To tap a wider range of renewable and sustainable materials, the jewellery industry will have to learn more about the mechanical properties of different biomaterials over the long term. As with most new materials, trial and error is often the surest route to product development. Mo.Na’s founders recall a time when they had to refund a whole batch of orders after heatwave temperatures melted the early bioplastics gems they sold.
It’s possible that computer-aided design could help here. Coupled with biomaterials, these digital tools could help the jewellery industry cut the waste inherent to trial-and-error designing. Computer modelling could screen for the best candidate materials more efficiently while simulating jewellery shapes, which can reduce the number of physical mock-ups needed. 3D printing could help producers cut the amount of byproduct that comes out of their process.
With renewable materials and digital efficiencies, the jewellery industry could become an unexpected engine for valorising all kinds of industry waste.
