Every Day Is Earth Day: The Case for Recycled Metal Jewelry
Most jewelry brands don't talk about what their pieces are made of. They talk about how the pieces look, how they feel, what they mean. The material is treated as a given — metal is metal, right?
It isn't. Where metal comes from and what happens to it at the end of a piece's life is exactly the kind of decision that separates a jewelry brand with a sustainability practice from one with a sustainability page. Here's how I think about it.
Recycled casting grain: where every piece starts
Before any Astor & Orion piece is cast, the metal exists as casting grain — small pellets of recycled brass or recycled sterling silver that have already been refined once. When we're ready to produce, the grain gets melted and poured. Because jewelry metals have to assay correctly — meaning if tested, the alloy has to meet its standard — a small percentage of refined metal is typically blended in to hit the right composition. Sterling silver has to be .925. Brass has to hold its ratio of copper and zinc. But the overwhelming majority of the material is recycled, and the intent is the same: use what already exists rather than pull new material from the ground.
What most buyers don't know is how the recycled metal actually gets to the piece. Recycled casting grain is functionally identical to virgin metal in every measurable way — same strength, same finish quality, same ability to hold detail through the casting process. The difference is upstream: where the material came from, and what it didn't require to get here.
Why recycled sterling silver and recycled brass
Our demi-fine tier uses recycled sterling silver — .925 silver, the same standard used in fine jewelry. Sterling is lighter than brass, brighter, and carries a different quality of light.
Our fashion-tier pieces are cast in recycled jeweler's brass. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc — dense, warm, and extraordinarily good at holding fine sculptural detail. When you see a piece with tight curves, raised texture, or a surface that catches light at different angles, that's partly the design and partly the material. Brass lets the casting process be precise.
Both materials can be melted down and recast indefinitely without losing their properties. That's the core of why we use them.
Why no stones
I get asked about this regularly. Every piece in the main collection is designed without set stones — no sapphires, no turquoise, no diamonds. The reason is circular.
If a piece has a stone set into it, that stone has to be removed before the metal can be recycled. Professional metal refiners can handle this — but it adds a step, and steps add friction. The more friction in the recycling process, the less likely it actually happens. By designing without stones, every piece stays as simple to recycle as possible. You send it back, we melt it down, the metal becomes something new. No extraction required, no extra handling, no reason not to close the loop.
The take-back program works because the material is ready to recycle. That was a design decision made before the first piece was ever sculpted.
The environmental math
Mining is one of the most environmentally damaging industries on the planet. It strips land, uses enormous amounts of water, and generates waste at scale. Recycled metal doesn't eliminate all of that — the original mining happened somewhere in the past — but it meaningfully reduces new demand on the system. Every piece cast from recycled grain is a piece that didn't require a new extraction.
Earth Day is a useful prompt to talk about these choices. But they're not choices we make once a year. The material is the same in April as it is in October. The commitment to recycled casting grain isn't a campaign. It's the operating system.
Karen Hartman, Founder, Astor & Orion. Updated April 2026.