Can lab-grown diamonds replace the real thing?

Editor’s Note: This story was produced as part of CNN Style’s The September Issues, a hub for facts, features and opinions about fashion, the climate crisis, and you. “Looking deeper into it and talking to many diamond traders we heard about identical diamonds made in a lab and saw it as our opportunity to bring transparency and ethics to an old-minded industry.” Digging Deeper Many people still associate diamond mining with the horrific environmental and labor practices surrounding conflict or “blood” diamonds. Emma Watson attends the 2018 Vanity Fair Oscar Party wearing lab-grown diamonds from Vrai & Oro Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images In 2019 De Beers, the world’s largest diamond miner, launched its version of an end-to-end traceability platform, which is intended to be adopted across the industry. “One of the biggest issues with the report is that it is hard, and inaccurate, to try to pile all lab-grown companies together and make blanket statements about their environmental impact,” says Martin Roscheisen, CEO of Diamond Foundry via email. “Also, what we’re doing isn’t an exact science so you can’t accurately compare any two points of data, such as perceived environmental impact.” Ana de Armas in The Natural Diamond Council's first celebrity campaign Natural Diamond Council Allison Rippin Armstrong is an environmental scientist who has worked in Botswana and in the Northwest Territories in Canada, where she acted as a compliance specialist when De Beers proposed mining the area.