Before & After

Before

Ever since the discovery of gold, silver, and jewels, humans have used them to create jewelry. We have now all been conditioned to buy jewelry through extensive advertising, and men dutifully spend exorbitant amounts of their hard-earned money on tiny sparkly rings, bracelets, necklaces, and watches so that the women in their lives can show off their collection to their friends and family.

The raw materials for the production of jewelry are mined in typically harsh conditions, and the pursuit of them because of their monetary value means that often the environment is destroyed as mountains are leveled and natural water and land masses are ransacked just to get to the raw materials under ground, as has been popularized by TV shows like "Gold Rush". Today the the rain forests in Peru are being destroyed at an alarming rate as miners strip them down to get to the recently discovered gold, and poisoning the environment with mercury which is used in the extraction process.

After

People don't own possessions in Nutopia so no one "owns" any jewelry. A modest amount of jewelry is available from the Central Sharing Facility which everyone can share. Once jewelry has been requested and used it is returned so that the next person can use it. There is no economy which demands the production and consumption of jewelry so there is only a modest amount of jewelry production. In Nutopia there is no longer any mining of precocious metals or jewels for the sole purpose of jewelry manufacturing.