Article filmed and produced by RTL Belgium about synthetic / laboratory / ecological diamonds

https://m.rtl.be/videos/739061

Synthetic / laboratory / ecological diamonds are currently very fashionable and the market is taking note.

As consumers are increasingly concerned about the environmental and moral cost of the products they buy, synthetic diamonds have become an increasingly popular alternative to traditionally mined stones, according to Earther.

Official figures: Recent studies show that the market for laboratory diamonds has grown from 1% of the rough diamond market at $ 14 billion in 2016 to around 2 to 3% today.

Development has taken more than 60 years to materialize.

From the 1950s, scientists learned to synthesize small brown stones that could be used for industrial applications, such as cutting tools and high-power electronics.

The first attempts to synthesize a gem-quality diamond followed in the 1970s, but it was not until the beginning of this decade that producers discovered how to regularly produce large, colorless stones that could be used in jewelry.

While the majority of laboratory grown diamonds on the market are considered to be melee (less than 0.18 carat), the technology for producing large stones has improved considerably in recent years.

The University of Augsburg in Germany was able to produce a 155-carat diamond that measures four inches in diameter, even if it was not a gemstone.

This leap in quality prompted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to expand the definition of a diamond to include stones grown in the laboratory.

He even abandoned the requirement that they be labeled "synthetic".

The rest of the diamond industry seems to be following suit - softening its opposition to laboratory grown stones.

In an unexpected twist, De Beers, the company responsible for the ad campaign “A diamond is eternal” and a longtime opponent of synthetic diamonds, even launched its first laboratory-grown line, Lightbox, last year.