The D-Word: The Truth About Diamond Mining & Ethical Alternatives

On the Manufactured Myth and Human Cost of Diamonds

Mbuyi Mwanza is fifteen years old. He spends his days shoveling and sifting gravel in artisanal mines in southwest Democratic Republic of Congo. His back aches constantly. His father is blind; his mother left years ago. It has been three months since he last found a diamond, and his debts—for food, for his father's medicine—are piling up. If he finds a large stone, maybe a carat, he might earn $100. Enough to dream about going back to school, which he left at twelve.

Meanwhile, in a 12th-floor showroom in New York City's diamond district, a man slips on a gold signet ring. He's planning a proposal. He has heard about conflict, about miserable conditions, and he worries. "I don't want a symbol of our union," he says, "to also be associated with chaos and controversy and pain."

These two men are separated by ten thousand miles and an unimaginable gulf of circumstance. But they are connected by the same small, pressurized piece of carbon—and by the illusion that gives it meaning.

The Illusion Behind the Diamond Industry

"The diamond industry created an illusion so spectacular it turned into truth." That's jewelry designer Aja Raden, speaking in the documentary Nothing Lasts Forever. Director Jason Kohn's film peels back the veneer of the diamond business—not to expose the mines this time, but to expose the myth itself.

"The truth about diamonds," Raden says, "is that they're all exactly the same, and none of them are really worth anything."

This is the part where you're supposed to feel the floor shift beneath you. De Beers—the cartel that cornered the market and invented the phrase "A Diamond is Forever"—didn't just sell stones. They sold an idea: that love requires proof, that proof must be expensive, and that the expense must be a diamond. They invented the engagement ring as we know it. Before the late 1800s, there was no tradition. No standard. By the mid-20th century, the two-month-salary rule was gospel.

Kohn's film introduces us to the executives, the gemologists, the synthetic diamond makers, the traders—all orbiting a central absurdity. Diamonds are not rare. The earth is full of them. The scarcity is manufactured, the pricing controlled, and the romance written by admen.

The Human Cost of Diamond Mining

But if the myth is absurd, the reality beneath it is brutal. While Nothing Lasts Forever focuses on the cartel and the infiltration of synthetic stones, the mining conditions that produce natural diamonds remain a scandal in their own right.

TIME Magazine has documented the artisanal diamond mines of the DRC, where nearly 10% of the population relies on income from diamonds. Many miners work for wages of less than $1 a day. Children as young as seven are lowered by ropes into narrow pits to dig out sacks of dirt, which other children then wash in search of stones. Child labor, bonded labor, forced labor—these aren't fringe cases. They are structural features of the industry.

In Zimbabwe, the military has been documented compelling civilians to dig for diamonds without pay, using violence against those who refused. In Sierra Leone, children were conscripted into the mines during a decade-long civil war funded by the very stones they extracted. The Kimberley Process—the international certification scheme designed to stem the flow of "blood diamonds"—addresses only the most visible conflicts. It says nothing about poverty wages, nothing about child labor, nothing about the systematic exploitation of communities who sit atop unimaginable mineral wealth and see almost none of it.

"We have so much wealth, yet we stay so poor," says Zacharie Mamba, head of the mining division in Tshikapa, DRC. "I can understand why you Americans say you don't want to buy our diamonds. Instead of blessings, our diamonds bring us nothing but misfortune."

The Way Out: Lab-Grown and Recycled Diamonds

Here's what the diamond industry doesn't want you to know: you don't need them anymore.

Lab-grown diamonds are chemically, optically, and structurally identical to mined stones. Same carbon. Same crystal structure. Same fire and brilliance. The only difference is origin—one was pulled from a pit in Congo by a child's hands, and the other was grown in a controlled facility with zero human exploitation. Even trained gemologists often can't tell them apart without specialized equipment. De Beers spent decades dismissing synthetics, then quietly launched their own lab-grown line when they saw the writing on the wall.

And then there's an even simpler option: stones that already exist. Estate jewelry. Antique rings. Heirloom pieces. Recycled diamonds that have already been cut, already been set, already made their journey from earth to jeweler decades ago. No new mining required. No new harm done. Just beautiful stones given a second life.

The industry will tell you these alternatives are somehow lesser. That a "real" diamond must come from the ground. But remember who invented that story—and why. De Beers built an empire on manufactured scarcity and manufactured sentiment. The idea that love requires a freshly mined stone is just another chapter of the same fiction.

What You Can Do: Choosing Ethical Jewelry

If you're planning a proposal—or buying any piece of diamond jewelry—you have choices that didn't exist a generation ago.

Choose lab-grown. You'll get the same stone, often at a fraction of the price, with the certainty that no one suffered for it. The technology has matured; the stigma is fading; and frankly, the only people who still care whether your diamond came from a mine are the people who profit from mines.

Or choose recycled. Vintage and estate diamonds carry their own romance—one that's real, rooted in history rather than marketing. A stone that's been worn and loved for fifty years has a story. It doesn't need to be pulled from the earth to matter.

Or choose no diamond at all. The tradition is newer than you think. Sapphires, emeralds, moissanite, simple gold bands—love doesn't require a specific mineral to be legitimate. That requirement was invented in a boardroom, not handed down through generations.

As for what we call these things—blood diamonds, conflict diamonds, ethical diamonds, synthetic diamonds—the vocabulary matters less than the willingness to step outside the story we've been sold. Nothing Lasts Forever ends with a question hanging in the air: if the illusion crumbles, what's left?

What's left is the freedom to choose something better. Stones grown without suffering. Stones already in circulation. Or no stones at all—just the love itself, unadorned and unburdened.

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Sources: TIME Magazine's reporting on blood diamonds (2015, 2021); Nothing Lasts Forever (2022), directed by Jason Kohn.

Cover image: The New York Times

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