Asia’s relationship with gold transcends mere adornment, intertwining sustainability with ancestral wisdom. From the urban mines in Tokyo to the rivers where the Igorot people in the Philippines pan for gold, the continent is a mosaic of recycling practices, as traditional as it is diverse.
The concept of “precious metals” is age-old; take, for example, their long-time use as currency. “Coins were the currency for [trade on the] Silk Road. So you could have gold and silver coins—alloys with brass and lead— and then you could [trade them for] goods. And this was interesting for two reasons,” says Mathilde Berger, art historian and lecturer at L’École Asia Pacific. “First, a Silk Road trade allowed people to use those coins
and to transport them; they started to pierce them, drilling the metal to string it around themselves—[an early form of ] a bank account. Back then, you did not have a bank with a safe with silver and gold in it. You had to string it and wear it on your belt or around your neck,” rather like a necklace, she explains. “So you see where the jewels and metals start to have a connection. They had to wear it because of their nomadic lifestyle.” What’s more, she says, “Ancient civilisations in Asia understood the value of gold not only as a symbol of wealth but as a resource to be cherished and reused.”
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Mathilde Berger, art historian and lecturer at L’École Asia Pacific (Photo: courtesy of L’École Asia Pacific)
From this concept of reuse of certain metals emerged the idea of recycling, which is deeply ingrained in ancient cultures. “If we went back in time and asked people about recycling and sustainability, they would find it a very odd question, because they never wasted. Especially with metal: the intrinsic practice within goldsmithing workshops all around the world has always been to melt metal and mint coins. The practice of recycling gold is not a modern innovation but a time- honoured tradition.”
Fast-forward to contemporary Asia, where the practice of reclaiming precious metals continues to thrive, particularly in Japan. In fact, even the winners at the Tokyo Olympics were awarded medals made of e-waste gold. Companies such as Japan Material and Eco-System Recycling extract precious metals from mountains of discarded electrical and electronic devices, processing the items in a solution containing acids that dissolves gold and other precious metals while leaving plastics and other non-metal materials intact. A further chemical treatment causes the gold ions to revert to solid metal, which is further refined to increase its purity to 99.99 per cent, at which point it is cast into bars or ingots, ready to be sold.
India’s connection to the precious metal is seen in every glittering bazaar, but it’s in the hands of the soni goldsmiths in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and the sonars in Mumbai’s Crawford market that the cycle of gold finds continuity. These traditional artisans, also known as karigars, are born into the craft and have been melting down family heirlooms and outdated designs for centuries, breathing new life into old gold. It is also common for Indian families to exchange old gold items for new ones during Hindu festivals such as Akshaya Tritiya, Dhanteras and Diwali, when buying gold is considered auspicious. Many jewellers in India offer buy-back programmes whereby customers can trade in old gold for new pieces, with the value assessed based on purity and weight. “The practice of melting down old gold to create new pieces is deeply rooted in Indian culture. It’s not just about recycling; it’s about preserving family history and ensuring that the value of gold is never lost,” says Berger.
An open cast mine in New South Wales, Australia (Photo: courtesy of jasonbennee / Getty Images)
In Thailand, Bangkok’s Chinatown alleys buzz with the energy of gold traders who have turned recycling into a business. The process begins with the collection of scrap gold. Traders and pawnshops purchase old, broken and unwanted gold items ranging from jewellery to gold coins and other artefacts, then carefully assess their purity and weight. The gold is then melted down in a furnace by goldsmiths, then poured into moulds to create bullion bars or ingots, which, when cooled and solidified, are sent to refiners, who remove impurities and any other metals that were alloyed with the gold in its previous form. It is then crafted into new pieces of jewellery. According to a report by World Gold Council, in the second quarter of 2024, Thailand’s consumer gold demand rose 20 per cent year-on-year to nine tonnes, the highest growth among Southeast Asian countries.
“Southeast Asia is known as a gold centre. It has come to be known as the Golden Peninsula, and the land of gold,” says John Mulligan, director of market relations and climate change lead at the World Gold Council, an international trade association for the gold industry.
It’s not just gold that receives such reverence: further south, in the artisan villages of Bali, luxury brand John Hardy takes inspiration from these age-old practices to work with silver as well as gold, integrating community recycling programmes that preserve Bali’s cultural integrity in fine jewellery. Pieces are made by melting and repurposing old gold and silver instead of mining new ore. “This [sustainability] goes back to the very first day John put his foot island of Bali … [he fell] in love with the place. [That’s] when he started the John Hardy brand,” says Jan-Patrick Schmidt, the brand’s CEO. “Our workshop in Bali is built out of bamboo; there’s a river that runs through it and a tree in the middle. There is no wastewater there’s no industrial waste, [jewellery] is all still handcrafted and everything from the packaging to the gold and silver [is sustainably made]. We use reclaimed gold and silver. John says: ‘Who am I to dig up the Earth, to destroy nature?’”
Gold panning, or simply panning, is a form of placer mining and traditional mining that extracts gold from a placer deposit using a pan (Photo: courtesy of Kriangkrai Thitimakorn / Getty Images)
Gold recycling isn’t the only way to obtain the metal without excessive damage to natural resources. Berger says, “In Asia, some civilisations don’t want to dig. They think it’s disrespectful to nature or the gods of nature to disturb the ground forces, so they tend to pan the water and the river and collect the shiny things they find.” That’s perhaps where the most evocative of these sustainability tales come from: the riverbeds of the Philippines, where the indigenous Igorot people have long sifted through the waters for gold—a sustainable practice of harvesting without the scar of mining.
The community, based in the Cordillera mountain range in the north of the Philippines, has been panning gold in the region’s rivers and streams for centuries. When the Spanish set foot on the archipelago in the 16th century, they were surprised to witness the Igorots, a local community, wearing precious handmade gold jewellery. Despite the competition of large-scale mining operations, the Igorot continue to pan for gold, which they both make into jewellery for personal use and trade with other communities for necessities such as salt, cloth and cattle.
Mulligan highlights that modern jewellery makers are starting to pay more attention to the old ways. “Being increasingly respectful and listening to and learning from the knowledge of traditional indigenous people is a relatively recent learning,” he says.
Each of these practices, from the high-tech to the hands-on, challenges the throwaway culture of the modern world. Many refineries are adopting stricter due diligence processes and sustainability practices. Mulligan explains the industry’s efforts towards sustainability: “In 2019, we published something with our members—and the broader gold mining community—to say, this is what responsible mining is, in detail, in practice. And that’s something called the Responsible Gold Mining Principles.”
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Traditional Chinese gold phoenix-shaped earrings (Photo: courtesy of L’École Asia Pacific)
Gold round ornament with donkey motif (Photo: courtesy of L’École Asia Pacific)
These principles consist of ten overarching guidelines categorised under environmental, social and governance (ESG) areas and addressing issues such as labour rights, gender diversity and environmental management. Mulligan says, “The principles are mandatory for World Gold Council members and require independent assurance of compliance. This initiative represents a concerted effort to standardise responsible practices across the gold mining industry,” providing framework for stakeholders, community leaders and investors to assess a company’s performance in terms of sustainability and responsible mining.
Berger says, “Gold recycling is not just an economic necessity, it’s a cultural imperative. The practices we see in Asia today are deeply rooted in history and tradition, making them all the more valuable in our modern world.” As Mulligan puts it, what we really need to do is responsibly source precious metals and “look at the whole value chain, the whole supply chain and say: how do we fix it”. The World Gold Council spends much of its time “focussed at the source, because that’s where the impact lies, particularly where people most need change or where they’re most vulnerable. We need to learn from rural or remote communities, especially from the aspect of community-led dialogue.” Miners have started to understand that they “have to engage in that community dialogue [with communities that incorporate traditional gold recycling methods as part of their culture], make sure it’s getting the ground-level, bottom-up communication”.
Traditional recycled gold belt plaques with deer design (Photo: courtesy of L’École Asia Pacific)
One thing is certain: with depleting resources, gold is becoming less accessible and more valuable. To keep up with this demand, recycling and other old methods are the only way forward. “We have unfortunately broken the world to some extent. We have to change business practices if we’re going to fix it,” says Mulligan—and these fixes can’t continue to take a bottom-up approach. “From a decarbonisation [of the industry] point of view, in many countries, if the gold miners didn’t bring in the intention of clean energy or clean technology, nobody would,” he says.
This recognition of the industry’s impact highlights the urgency for comprehensive, sustainable solutions that address not only gold recycling but the entire lifecycle of the metal’s production and consumption. “We need change at a scale and pace that we’ve never seen before,” says Mulligan. “The ancient world didn’t need to worry about fixing the environment. We do.”
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