Last week a few viral articles made their round online on the topic of the ethics of collecting crystals: ARE ‘ETHICAL’ HEALING CRYSTALS THE ‘NEW BLOOD DIAMONDS’? and Do You Know Where Your Healing Crystals Come From?

The Ethics of Collecting Crystals

CAUTION: PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO FIRST! The crux of the point I’m making is in the video (not in this blog post.)

Here, I’m going to discuss my take on this whole situation.

Resources

My Blog Posts Related to the Ethics of Crystal Collecting

Other Articles Citing Mineral Mining Problems

Although I do agree that there are mining issues that exist, the main point I’m trying to drive home here today is this:

Usually, mineral specimens are collected as a by-product to ore mining where mines have been dug to get at coal, copper, aluminum, gold, etc. for other items our society seems to have no problem with.

Lavender Pit Copper Mine in Bisbee, AZ Photo Credit: StellarD [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Check Yourself: Are you a Crystal Hoarder?

However, after saying all of that I do think that it’s extremely important that we don’t over-collect. I’ve written several blog posts on being careful not to crystal hoard:

Options to Collect Consciously

  1. Trade: in the spirit of collecting crystals responsibly, we’re starting something new for students in my Certified Crystal Healer Course. We’re encouraging conscious crystal collecting; a way to rehome crystals not being used or we have too many of. Recycle them and save some money at the same time. See if you can create a group to trade within.
  2. Mine your own: This is more fun than you can imagine!
  3. Purchase directly from a small hand miner
  4. Purchase from estate sales or large established mineral collections: gem shows are a great way to accomplish this

Conflict Mineral Info

What You Can Do

  • Inform others about Conflict Minerals
  • Email your tech companies and tell them what you think
  • Ask questions when purchasing electronics!!!
  • Finally, vote with your dollars. Choose to purchase your next smartphone or other electric from a company that pledges to NOT use conflict minerals.

The more potential customers who ask these questions, the more the tech companies will move to make change happen.

Let’s Not Redirect

Someone correctly commented in the live chat above this:

​”Pointing out that electronics are also an issue does NOT negate that crystal mining is also a problem! It does not suddenly make it okay!”

Great point! Thanks for making it.

I’m not saying that it’s OK to specimen mine via strip mining. There would be NO strip mining solely for mineral specimens. The economics of it would simply make NO SENSE. In my original blog post from 2012 here, I go over how specimen mining is a much gentler process.

Reading this right now maybe you felt a pang of misplaced guilt when you read the title, thinking to yourself…

“Is my Crystal Collection unethical? Am I doing something wrong?”

But now that you watched the above video and you know what we really should be shining the light on, do you also feel the problems would get corrected if people knew the true issues at play here?

I’m going to ask you to help to set the record straight and please pledge to get this info out there by sharing or linking to this blog in 3 places or with 3 people. 

Did ya do it? It will help exponentially. Let’s make the right info go viral; not the wrong. You came here for a reason and you’ve been given a mission. What you do with this info now is up to you.

Thanks for listening to my rant!