"Ethical" is an easy word to print and a hard one to stand behind. At UP8 we try to keep it small and specific: what we can show at the bench, said in the same words we use with a customer.
Photo: UP8 specimen photo.
Lawful ground, at hand scale
Field work follows British Columbia rules for the tools and the place: hand-scale recovery where that is allowed, and respect for parks, protected areas, private land, existing titles, and Indigenous lands. Our current collecting areas are public roadcuts and pathway margins in the South Okanagan, not staked claims. Mechanized or permitted work is a different category, and we don't imply it.
Honest about metal
Gold and silver on studio pieces are melted and formed by hand. Some of that metal begins as rock or gravel worked by hand; some is purchased grain, scrap or wire melted in the same studio. When those sources share a crucible, the finished piece is mixed-origin, and we say so. Only a melt kept apart from purchased stock may be called entirely field-recovered.
Recycled wire
Our handmade wire work uses recycled copper or recycled 925 sterling wire, depending on the piece. That claim belongs to studio pieces only. It does not travel to drop-shipped or catalogue items, which are labelled separately in the shop.
Photo: UP8 specimen photo.
Small on purpose
We make no claim of industrial-scale "green mining." The work is small, local, and limited by what the law and the land allow. If you want the long version, our Ethics & Sustainability page and the BC Free Miner Stewardship Standard set it out line by line.
A question worth asking
When you look at any handmade piece, ours included, ask whether the batch was kept separate. If we can't show that it was, the mixed-metal sentence above is the whole truth. That is the ethical position we try to hold.
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