Have Green Watches Finally Arrived?

Mirroring the general trend, the recent Watches & Wonders show promoted innovative, ethical, and responsible developments in watchmaking. Will customers follow?

“Watches are in essence sustainable artifacts, because they are passed down through generations.” Regularly trotted out by watchmaking brands, this claim was starting to wear rather thin by the turn of the millennium. Up until then, clever marketing patter served to blur the lines between “long-lasting” and “sustainable.” Watches – at least mechanical ones – are certainly long-lasting: in an age of planned obsolescence, they endure far longer than many other items. However, that in and of itself does not make them ethical or responsible – qualities which today are part and parcel of what we understand by the term “sustainable.”

A Long Process of Education

The general public has now grasped this distinction, thanks to awareness-raising by other industries, with their dedicated labels: FSC timber, recycled paper and aluminum, Fairmined gold, RJC stones, and a few dozen others. As a result, watchmaking has started stepping up in this respect – albeit in a somewhat disorganized fashion.

As yet, it’s still apparent that a multitude of standards can apply to products and related brands within a single group – some standards may even be competing with each other. There are of course some worthy pioneers; Chopard is one. The jewelers and watchmakers declared that from 2018 onwards, all of their output would be made using Fairmined ethical gold. This certification guarantees gold mined in line with high human, economic, and environmental standards.

The Risk of Scandal

This was a relatively simple exercise for Chopard; it is one of few brands to have its own foundry (Rolex does, too). Others have to resort to third parties, and the latter are not always immune from scandal. A few months ago, a refinery in the Ticino region of Switzerland discovered that unbeknown to it, dirty gold had entered its production circuit through one of its subcontractors – with an ensuing knock-on effect on the watchmaking and jewelry brands it worked with.

Sustainable initiatives also come at a cost, and this is reflected in the sale price of the watches in question. Initially, Chopard estimated the related cost increase at 20%, and agreed to bear half of it. Clients followed suit, paying the rest. Today, all of Chopard’s gold watches are Fairmined certified, and the clients have stayed on board.

The First Convert to Sustainable Watchmaking: The Display Case

However, gold watches account for just a tiny proportion of all watches sold each year. The scope for “sustainable” progress, therefore, lies elsewhere: steel, titanium, leather, diamonds, packaging, and the like. Real progress has been made in packaging. For its recent Seastrong Gyre, Alpina designed an inner box made from FSC paper, housing a case made from recycled ABS plastic whose lining uses recycled plastic bottles (rPET). The box comes with a single sheet of paper for the warranty and certificate of authenticity, printed on FSC recycled paper. To reduce its ecological footprint still further, Alpina has also adopted the paperless instruction sheet, accessed using a QR code. Similarly, Breitling has just designed a gift box made entirely out of recycled bottles. This is now sent to subsidiaries packed flat, thus reducing shipping volumes and cutting transport-related CO2 emissions by 60%. The box itself is also recyclable. Panerai has gone down the same path too, with a box of its own made from recycled plastic.

Recycled Metals: Not There Yet

For steel, the recycling rate in watchmaking is minuscule. Panatere, which specializes in watch cases, is one company actively working to address this problem, with offers already available to brands.

Panatere is looking at recycling titanium, too, but once again, this is just barely at the embryonic stage across the watchmaking industry as a whole. It took Panerai’s recent ground-breaking eLabID to demonstrate that a watch can indeed contain over 98% recycled titanium by weight. Building on this proof of concept should be all the easier thanks to the ‘open-source’ approach taken by Panerai, which has published a full list of all the partners its teams worked with to achieve this result.

Stones and Leather: A Long Road

Leather and diamonds are covered by a large number of standards governing farming conditions and mining. RJC is the best-known standard for mining, and Jaquet Droz is of the latest watchmaking firms to have adopted it.

The rules exist, but have a paradoxical effect: it could be argued that since the watchmaking industry is keeping well clear of ‘blood diamonds’ and cruel crocodile farming, it could simply continue mining stones and killing millions of creatures, provided the conditions are (allegedly) “decent.” However, there are alternatives to both these options: synthetic diamonds and vegan ‘leathers’ – two options that the watchmaking industry has yet to take up.

For its part, the jewelry sector has now started using synthetic diamonds – albeit only independent, entry-level, and mid-range brands. Larger jewelers have yet to follow in their footsteps. Watchmakers, meanwhile, are beginning to look at vegan leathers, and have begun using them for some straps and packaging. Are they worried about not living up to the historic image of ‘luxury’? If so, they might be reassured by Tesla: the carmaker has been using vegan leather since 2016, and that hasn’t stopped it from becoming the world leader in electric vehicles, some of which sell for over $150,000 apiece.