Eco friendly diamonds

Q: Dear Diamond Buying Advice, Can you help me find an eco friendly solution to buying a diamond? First off though, great blog! thanks for providing some interesting articles about diamonds and I have been reading through your advice to other people. I want to very soon buy a diamond but don't want to support the mining and digging up of the ground soil everywhere. What is the best way to go about buying a diamond without ruining the earth? I wish to propose with a diamond but am wondering if fabricated diamonds are all that good. What is your opinion about this? I know I could just not bother with a diamond ring but that doesn't sit right with me. I hope I am making sense. Is there any point in me looking at made diamonds that are not dug from the ground? I don't mind buying over the internet, I just don't want to be sold a dud. What are the things I need to consider when buying a made diamond? Thanks in advance for your help with this. I look forward to hearing back from you when you get a chance. Hopefully soon as I want to get this sorted and will hopefully have come to a decision within the next couple of months. (Christmas at the very latest, lol!) But yeah, whenever it's convenient. By the way my budget is $5000. that has to include the ring setting too. So I guess like $3500 to $4500 for the diamond and the rest for the diamond ring setting. I am in the US so don't have to worry about any additional import duties I guess if I buy from US companies. (I'm cool if you stretch it a bit, but I will try to keep it to $5000 total.) I am hoping for a 1 ct diamond, but I don't know if that is going to work. I heard from a friend that one carat is usually more than $5000. Ok, I hope I didn't ramble on too long. Anyway, I hope you can help me find something nice.
HH

A: Hi HH, thanks for your message. I totally get where you're coming from. I have heard of some people buying second hand diamonds in order to solve this problem. As a matter of fact I read an article yesterday about a couple who found a vintage store that sells good quality vintage diamonds (this was in Sydney Australia). They went there and had a look at the diamond rings on offer. They tried on a few and found a perfect fit which the woman decided was in the style that she really liked. A second option is to look at laboratory grown diamonds. The diamonds that are being produced now are identical to mined diamonds and some companies even source their electricity from renewable sources. I know of one diamond creation company that is even 100% carbon neutral. If you are wondering where to buy laboratory grown diamonds I maintain a page on one of my websites that lists the places I consider to provide excellent value and believe you will be very happy with the service they give.
see https://mytop10diamondwebsites.com/lab-created-diamonds/ Something that very few people realize is that laboratory grown diamonds are identical to diamonds  that are dug up from the ground. Just yesterday the FTC in the United States ruled that lab grown diamonds are diamonds. It said that created diamonds should not be referred in to marketing as synthetics, but rather as lab made diamonds, man made diamonds, or even foundry diamonds. Now just because diamonds can be grown in a lab does not mean that you can find 10 carat lab grown diamonds. The big diamonds are very difficult to make in the lab just as they rarely form in the earth. Big diamonds are rare and will continue to be rare. Most of the diamonds that are made, luckily enough, are just the right size for engagement rings. Oh and if you have a look at the prices of the companies I listed you will find that you will easily be able to afford a 1 carat diamond with a very nice ring setting. Now you may not have as much variety among lab grown diamonds, but fortunately there are less unlovely ones among the available range. It's quite a bit easier to hunt for a good stone as they usually don't have a lot of visible inclusions as you would find in the more included mined diamonds. Most of the inclusions I have seen in laboratory made diamonds did not severely affect the beauty of the diamond. Though to be honest I have not looked at nearly as many lab grown diamonds as I have natural mined diamonds. Anyway, all the best with your diamonds hunting. Let me know how it goes.
-Thomas Stevens
Diamond Buying Advice