13 articles in this category
Ten years ago, I stood in a cobalt mine in the DRC, watching workers haul sacks of ore under a brutal sun. That image never leaves you. It reshapes ho...
There's a particular red that painters used to swear by. Not the warm crimson of cadmium, not the bright vermilion of mercury sulfide, but a dense, he...
Red is the color of danger, love, and warning labels. But the red in your child's snack or your favorite blush might carry a danger that doesn't show ...
You chose the pigment because it was plant-based. No cadmium, no cobalt. The supplier’s brochure showed a solar-powered factory and a carbon offset ba...
So your company has an ethical sourcing policy. It mentions child labor, conflict minerals, maybe even carbon footprints. But does it say anything abo...
A cerulean sky on a yogurt lid. A cobalt sneaker. A navy logo on a plastic bottle. That blue came from somewhere—often a pit in a water-scarce region ...
You're painting a wall, mixing a custom color. The pigment comes from a factory in Germany, but the cobalt that gives it that deep blue? It was dug by...
You paint with a red that outlasts empires. But the community that dug its ore? Already ghosted. That's the trade-off nobody puts on the datasheet. I'...
Last year, a European paint buyer learned his black pigment—sold as 'premium industrial carbon black'—was sourced from a region where militia groups t...
Here is a scenario: you are an artist who buys a tube of Crimson Lake pigment. The label says 'natural lake pigment, sustainably harvested.' You think...
The yellow pigment in your living room paint looks harmless. It is cheerful. But that exact shade might have come from a mine that forced an entire vi...
You finally get the lab report back on that group of Pigment Red 101. The color is perfect. But the sourcion paperwork? A black hole. No mine name, no...
Blue is the rarest natural color. It's also, pound for pound, one of the dirtiest. The deep indigo of your jeans might have come from a river in Bangl...