The Santa Fe Farmers’ Market is a great example of a circle-based approach that helps the local community thrive. It involves community, interdependence and sustenance on the most basic level. Local, organically grown food only appears more expensive. In fact, it is simply reflecting the real cost of growing in a sustainable manner. By supporting sustainable-based local business, we strengthen our own circle. Wealth that stays in our local community creates an upward spiral, strengthening our relationship with each other and our bioregion, instead of a downward spiral, which concentrates wealth at the expense of economy and community.

These same principles can be carried through in resources that we import from outside of our community. Commerce is based on equitable exchange, or fair trade. In the circle, all parts have a radical equality. As a businessperson, if I am to honor that basic truth that every person is a brother or sister walking on his or her own spiritual journey, this goal of fair trade needs to extend throughout the entire circle of my supply chain, from mine to market. We all have the same basic needs and depend upon clean air, healthy food and water. In deep reverence to the natural world, I call this great movement of interdependent circles building creative synergy “The Circle Manifesto.”

In Action

The movement from our current state of fragmentation to a circle-based economy is a process. We have to heal thousands of years of patriarchial power systems and empires based on straight lines. Commerce based on sustainability is both a goal and a process. We also have to act within the context of sound economics. Yet no matter where we are or what we are doing, we can find our community, strengthen our circles and make a difference.

In my circle-based company, we continually look for opportunities to create relationships based on our core values. Purchasing carbon offsets and producing jewelry in-house with fair wages and recycled precious metal was a natural step. Internationally, fabrication with recycled precious metal in a fair trade factory took us twelve years. We might be the first in the vast jewelry sector to achieve this.

Our current direction includes educating the trade and public through our blog and building a set of relationships with marginalized small-scale artisan-miners based on fair trade. I am trying to build a connection, a circle, between some small producer in the developing world and my customer by telling a universal story.

Right now, the movement for ethical jewelry is very small. Yet if just five percent of the public were to ask for fair trade or locally made recycled metal jewelry, it would tip an industry ignoring this wonderful emerging market.

For me, the balance between how I work with money, my humanity and passion for sustainability is a testing ground. I ask myself whether my decisions are going to altruistically strengthen an interdependent circle or not, factoring in the survival of our company circle in the market. Ultimately, each time I spend, it expresses core values, my spiritual path. For better or worse, spending money is gifting back to the world. You can make a huge difference by aligning your money and your values.