Cape Town Jeweller, Ashley Heather Strikes Gold With E-waste Gold Jewellery!
Cape Town Jeweller, Ashley Heather Strikes Gold With E-waste Gold Jewellery! Entrepreneur Ashley Heather, the founder of Ashley Heather Jewellery, uses and recycles materials from old circuit boards to create gold jewellery.
It all began when Heather signed up for part time jewellery classes on Saturday mornings, after only attending 20 minutes of the lesson Heather made the decision to sign up for the full time course.
She found that jewellery making was her passion when she showed resilience when she cut her finger while making her first ring and she carried on working while pushing the blood aside. She said, “I realized then and there that I was prepared to just carry on working after bleeding all over this piece, pushing the blood aside. This was the craft for me, and this was what I wanted to spend the rest of my career focusing on.”
Since then Heather managed to open her jewellery business in her garage in 2011, where she started working with silver that was recycled from photographic chemicals to produce the pieces. She found it difficult to source the chemicals as Darkroom photography was a dying art.
After lots of research Heather started working with e-waste, which contains both gold and silver. This is also the fastest growing municipal waste stream in the world. Sourcing the e-waste is not a challenge for Heather but the processing of it comes with lots of challenges, hence she works with a refinery.
“It’s a very technical and involved process and to be done safely needs much specialised equipment, which is why we are so grateful to be working with the refinery as we are.”
Heather describes the growth of her business as a slow process of organic growth because the business prides itself in creating jewellery that is luxurious and sustainable.
The business has a physical a physical store but it currently markets and sells its products online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
