Pandora's Recycled-Metal Commitment — 100 Per Cent by 2025
Pandora's Recycled-Metal Commitment — 100 Per Cent by 2025
The largest corporate recycled-silver-and-gold programme in jewellery
In 2021, Pandora announced that 100 per cent of the silver and gold used in its jewellery would be sourced from recycled material by 2025. The commitment forms part of a broader sustainability strategy that also includes the abandonment of mined diamonds in favour of laboratory-grown stones and a programme of carbon-neutrality targets. Given Pandora's scale — more than 6,800 retail points and an annual output in the order of one hundred million pieces — the recycled-metal pledge is among the largest corporate programmes of its type in the global jewellery industry by volume.
What recycled metal means
Recycled silver and gold in the jewellery context are precious metals refined from one of three principal feedstocks: post-consumer scrap, principally returned and recycled jewellery; industrial by-products, including manufacturing scrap and chemistry-process residues; and electronic-waste recovery, in which gold and silver are extracted from circuit boards and other electronic components. Refining returns these feedstocks to the same chemical purity as freshly mined material, and recycled metal is identical to mined metal in any practical sense once it leaves the refinery.
The supply chain for recycled metal is well established and has long served portions of the European jewellery industry. The Responsible Jewellery Council's Chain of Custody standard provides one of the principal certification frameworks for tracing recycled metal, and major refiners including Argor-Heraeus, Metalor, and Valcambi operate dedicated recycled-metal lines.
The commitment's scale
By volume, Pandora's commitment is substantial. The brand's annual silver use exceeds three hundred tonnes; its gold use is much smaller but still material. Achieving full transition by 2025 requires reorganising sourcing relationships across the brand's supply base in Thailand, where most production is concentrated, and ensuring that refiners can supply the volumes required at consistent quality.
Pandora's reported progress through the period from announcement to target date has indicated a phased transition, with new collections launched as recycled-only and existing inventory progressively migrated. The brand has stated that as of 2023, more than 80 per cent of metal use was from recycled sources.
Industry context
Recycled metal has become a focal sustainability claim across the jewellery industry, with brands at every price point — from Tiffany and Cartier through to mass-market retailers — making variants of the commitment. The carbon-emissions case for recycled over mined precious metal is widely cited, though the precise emissions reduction depends on the energy mix at the refinery and the proportion of post-consumer versus industrial-scrap feedstock. Critics have observed that recycled-metal claims do not, on their own, address the labour and environmental impact of legacy mining or of new mining for non-recycled portions of the supply chain.
For Skyjems clients
Recycled metal is now a standard offering across our refining partnerships. We can fabricate to client specification using either recycled or mined feedstock, with documentation traceable to the refiner. The metal itself is indistinguishable; the choice is one of supply-chain preference rather than material property.