Diamonds will always be a popular setting in rings, necklaces, bracelets and charms. The luster, sparkle and beauty of a diamond will always be admired.

Lab-Grown Diamonds have been getting considerable attention lately because they are visually identical to mined diamonds but are sustainable and eco-friendly.

There’s a growing movement of people who are trying to live a more sustainable, greener lifestyle. Consumers are watching what they buy and where products are sourced. Having jewelry that is beautiful yet does not strip our planet of natural resources is an attractive alternative.

Though Lab-Grown Diamonds are a new trend, more people seem to be interested in wearing them because of the reduced cost and identical properties.

“I deal with diamonds all day long, for three decades,” says Weinstein, executive director of the International Gemological Institute, a commercial testing laboratory. “To me, diamonds aren’t anything spectacular. It’s hard to get me to say, ‘Wow!’ ”

But lately he has been impressed by certain diamonds — those created in the lab.
Would-be diamond-makers have spent about half a century learning how to churn out big, sparkly diamonds like these. And it wasn’t easy. Back in the old days, Weinstein would rarely see lab-grown diamonds, and they didn’t look all that appealing.

“Ten years ago, they were mostly very yellow, or very orangey-yellow. If you had something that wasn’t really intense yellow, it was probably a brownish-type stone,” explains Weinstein. “They’ve figured out how to get rid of all that color and go into the white diamond world. The quality has gotten to the point to where they’re astonishingly white.”

And white diamonds are what most people want to buy. Synthetic diamonds are starting to appear at tony retailers like Barneys New York, which just introduced them in October as a high-tech, eco-friendly alternative to mined gems.

Each week, Weinstein’s laboratory receives lots of manufactured diamonds from folks who want an independent assessment of the four C’s: cut, color, clarity and carats.

There are now so many companies cranking out diamonds that just this year they banded together to form a trade group called the International Grown Diamond Association.

So far the group has written to the Federal Trade Commission to oppose using the term “synthetic” to describe these manufactured diamonds, saying this term carries a connotation of being artificial or fake and that it is “ripe for intentional disparagement of laboratory-grown diamonds.”

Labs are now churning out large white diamonds that are indistinguishable from those found in nature.

“That’s not our job,” he says, “to determine what the right kind of diamond is for an individual.”
He says they just want to make sure that everyone’s clear on exactly what they’re buying, “so that the marketplace — and mainly the public — can make an informed choice.”

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Article Source: NPR