PHOTO VIA Siri Leana-Theo

EARTHA’s handcrafted bracelets

When people are buying jewelry, they may not think about the impact of their purchase. From the initial production of the materials to when jewelry piles up in landfills, not all products created by jewelry businesses keep in mind the weight of the harmful products. After learning about the impacts of popular jewelry products, students at Mounds View had the idea to create EARTHA. 

Sophomores Tingting Wang and Siri Leana-Thao created EARTHA, a startup that makes environmentally-friendly bracelets, along with Mounds View class of 2024 alum Selina Wang. Currently, Tingting Wang serves as EARTHA’s CEO, Leana-Thao as the marketing manager and sophomore Jessica Huang — who joined EARTHA this school year — as the outreach manager. “We knew since we all liked jewelry and we also had a sustainable goal, we wanted to help the environment, and so we wanted to combine that and make sustainable jewelry,” said Tingting Wang. They decided to start the business in Fall 2023 as part of Mounds View’s Startup club. 

After learning about how gemstone mining poorly affects the environment, the EARTHA leaders were inspired to look into alternate resources for creating jewelry. “Growing up as Asian-Americans, we’ve learned how our cultures praise the meaning of jade and gemstones alike. However, we learned through our friends from Myanmar, the largest producer of gemstones, about how landscapes had been destroyed because of precious gemstone mining,” said Tingting Wang.

EARTHA did not want to use cheap, plastic materials that often fill up landfills and hurt the Earth. Thus, the main focus of EARTHA is to create sustainable jewelry, which the club does in two ways: sustainable resources and sustainable impact.

When deciding on how they wanted to create their jewelry, the group landed on using hand-made, recycled glass beads from Krobo artisans in Ghana. The beads are also created to eventually break down rather than add to environmental degradation. Once they receive the beads, they create the bracelets in bulk to sell both in-person and through Etsy. “We sold around 250 [bracelets] in a year so per month it would be around 20 bracelets,” said Tingting Wang. 

In addition to using sustainable resources, EARTHA has a goal of planting one tree for every five bracelets sold. EARTHA takes a portion of the profits made from the bracelets and donates them to One Tree Planted, an environmental nonprofit dedicated to reforestation efforts. So far, EARTHA has successfully planted 42 trees and hopes to plant even more. “Our main goal is to spread awareness about the harmful impacts of jewelry and just to help the environment,” said Tingting Wang.

Outside of Mounds View, EARTHA has expanded its business into a few different Minnesota stores, including Soderberg’s Floral & Gift, Churchill St. and La Vie Est Belle, all in the Twin Cities area. In order to do this, Huang starts by calling various stores to inquire about selling their products. From there, EARTHA makes an agreement with the stores to put their products in. “When we started off, we had consignment agreements with these stores so they didn’t have to have the risk of buying our product and not being able to sell it, and once we proved our products were valued by their customers, we transitioned to wholesales,” said Tingting Wang. 

The EARTHA leaders take unique steps to promote their products outside of Mounds View. “I personally really like doing the workshops that we do, cause sometimes we go into retirement centers and help people make bracelets,” said Leana-Thao. In December, EARTHA went to the Brookdale Senior Living Center for one of these workshops, and they hope to do more workshops similarly in other spaces. 

EARTHA also collaborates with other clubs at Mounds View to sell their products. Back in November, EARTHA announced their first collaboration with Mounds View’s H2O For Life club. When people purchased jewelry from their Etsy shop, they had the option to select H2O For Life as a charity to donate to along with the jewelry. Shortly after, EARTHA did a similar collaboration with Mounds View’s Science Olympiad to help fundraise for the club. 

EARTHA reflects the strong values of Tingting Wang, Leana-Thao and Huang as they strive for sustainability. “Our mission is to spread the idea of sustainable fashion to give conscientious consumers a choice on sustainable jewelry that doesn’t harm the environment,” said Tingting Wang. Starting at Mounds View, EARTHA has grown far past a high school organization. As they continue to grow their business, EARTHA maintains the ideas that they can create environmentally-conscious jewelry for anyone.