Isn’t it the greener choice?
That is the sales pitch. DD does not make it.
The only green here DD can assert with certainty is the paint on the machine. The rest — the seed, the energy bill, the comparisons — is exactly what the brochure leaves out.
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The seed
Laboratory growth does not start from nothing. Every stone grows on a diamond seed, and every seed line traces back to mined diamond — the industry was grown, literally, from the earth’s own material.
That does not make the process dirty. It makes the “born of pure science, untouched by mining” story incomplete. DD prefers complete stories.
The energy
Growing diamond means recreating extreme physics on demand — plasma at thousands of degrees for CVD, immense pressure and temperature for HPHT. Either way, the energy budget is industrial: commonly estimated in the hundreds of kilowatt-hours per carat, and honestly dependent on the plant, the process and the electricity grid behind it.
Where that electricity comes from decides most of the footprint. Most of the world’s production runs on ordinary grids, not waterfalls and wind farms. Some growers are genuinely cleaner than others; the brochure rarely says which.
Why DD stays out of it
The mining-versus-growing comparisons are genuinely debatable — and some of what is said in this market is not debatable, it is simply untrue. Regulators have formally warned sellers about unqualified eco claims for exactly this reason.
DD’s rule is the same here as everywhere: if a claim needs an asterisk, DD does not make it. You are offered the diamond, the price and the disclosed origin. Not a halo.
The bottom line
A laboratory-grown diamond is a technology product — the same family as the LED screen in your living room. Its price will probably follow a similar curve: downwards, as production scales.
And who cares? The screen is obsolete in a decade. The diamond will outlast the television, the sofa and the house around them. Buy it if you just care about the bling — it is beautiful, honestly priced and disclosed, and those claims survive scrutiny — not by fooling yourself that you care about the earth.