Time for change: How sustainable is your luxury watch?
· 18 min read
Luxury watchmaking is rarely associated with the climate crisis. Its ateliers are quiet and meticulous, its products compact, and its entire proposition is permanence: a promise the craft has kept since the first watchmakers set up in Geneva nearly five centuries ago.
Yet behind the polished dial lies a supply chain deeply embedded in one of the most carbon-intensive activities on earth: mining. From gold and platinum to diamonds and steel, the luxury watch sector sits at the apex of precious material demand. When combined with jewellery, the broader industry consumes over 2,000 tonnes of gold each year, more than half of total production globally.
The environmental price is severe and increasingly well quantified. A study published in December 2025 found gold to be the single largest commodity driver of mining-induced deforestation worldwide, responsible for 41.7% of it between 2001 and 2023. Add the mercury and cyanide used to separate gold, leaching into freshwater systems long after a mine closes, and the footprint of a single gold case runs far deeper than its 40 grams suggest.
Following the release of illuminem's NATURE100™, the first-ever global ranking of the best companies in nature impact, overseen by leading scientists and practitioners and celebrated by companies from Kering to Wise, as well as the unveiling of the world's most sustainable breweries last week, we now turn our lens to an industry that hides its footprint even deeper. Drawing again on the Sustainability Data Hub™ — tracking over 300 environmental and nature-related KPIs across more than 12,000 companies — and on the world's largest community of sustainability experts, illuminem presents the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the sustainability of the luxury watchmaking industry.
illuminem's Data Hub™ reveals that a watch's true cost is settled in the ground, long before the workshop.
The scale is astounding: producing a single ounce of 18-karat gold generates an average of 60 tons of waste rock. A Rolex Daytona, containing 5 or more ounces of gold, equates to over 300 tons of mine waste for a single timepiece. As watches and jewellery together account for over half of global gold demand, the industry is a principal customer of one of the world's most damaging extractive businesses.
Diamonds compound the problem: the small melee stones scattered across bezels and dials are precisely the category where origin is hardest to establish and most easily lost in trade. Even the strap carries weight, linking the sector to cattle ranching, itself the single largest driver of deforestation in the Amazon, accounting for 80% of felled trees.
Manufacturing is where the industry has genuinely moved toward sustainability. Audemars Piguet's Le Brassus manufacture was the first industrial plant to receive the Minergie-Eco® label. In Schaffhausen, Richemont's IWC extracts heat from the town's waste-water system to run its machinery alongside rooftop solar. Omega and IWC have both certified key production sites as carbon-neutral, and several manufactures now run entirely on renewable heat and power. But the true damage lies upstream, in mines whose ownership the industry itself often cannot trace.
illuminem's Data Hub™ demonstrates just how lopsided the progress is: across the seven largest Swiss houses, indirect supply-chain emissions, the so-called Scope 3, account for between 82% and 97% of each company's entire carbon footprint. Watchmaking's direct operations are inherently small, so the footprint instead concentrates upstream: gold mining and refining, component manufacturing by subcontracted suppliers, and the logistics of moving raw materials through a long, specialised supply chain. The true potential for climate neutrality lies outside the atelier, upstream in the value chain.
But the industry's central failure? "Imagine you went into a supermarket and they said sorry, we have no clue where our groceries come from," says Olivia Lipsky, sustainability expert at WWF Switzerland. "That's where we're at right now in the watch and jewellery sector."
That admission has not stopped the industry from trying. Across several fronts, watchmaking is attempting a transition that its business model was never designed for.
"For decades, the narrative has been built around extraction: extracting precious materials, natural resources, and ultimately value from the planet," Nicolas Freudiger, founder and CEO of ID Genève – Swiss pioneer of circular luxury watchmaking – shares exclusively with illuminem. "The next chapter is circular: creating value by keeping materials in use, designing out waste and surplus, and regenerating rather than depleting." The stories that will define the next generation of luxury, he argues, won't be about gold or diamonds, but "solar steel, seaweed, mycelium, and hemp."
The shifts we are now observing in the industry are not only being driven by ambition, but also, increasingly, the tightening grip of regulators.
The sector's favourite green label is about to become illegal. From September 2026, the EU bans product claims of "carbon neutral" built on offsetting rather than genuine reductions. The player in the ranking who has staked more on that claim than any independent of its scale is Oris, climate-neutral certified since 2021. illuminem's Data Hub™ reveals the Swiss house to have the lowest all-scopes carbon intensity (29.35) of any of its peers here, but the claim of neutrality still partly rests on offsets. Its reductions are real, but the label itself may soon have to go.
The most credible responses target the material itself. Two of the leaders in the list: Chopard has used exclusively ethical gold since 2018, the first major maison to commit outright. Breitling sources from artisanal mines and issues blockchain records that has taken traceable coverage from zero in 2022 to 49% today, and has gone so far as to commit to eliminating mined diamonds entirely in favour of lab-grown stones cut and polished in Gujarat.
Among those ranked, Rolex and Richemont recycle the highest proportion of gold in-house, at 91% and 94% respectively, both running their own foundries. Chopard’s foundry, the industry's oldest, dating to 1978, recycles up to 70% of its own metal waste, and Swatch Group operates one too. That control may be paying off beyond sustainability metrics: it's been a tough year for the industry, and Breitling's numbers show it, UK sales down 24.1%, amid gold at multi-year highs and disruptive U.S. tariffs. Richemont and Swatch Group, the two foundry-owners in this group with public results, grew through the same conditions, up 8% and 8.5% respectively, with Swatch Group crediting vertical integration directly. Sustainability, it seems, might not just be good for the planet, but also resilience.
Gold hit an all-time high above $5,600 an ounce in January 2026 before retreating to around $4,100 by August, still roughly a quarter higher than a year earlier. Rolex raised retail prices on its gold watches roughly 20% over the past year, nearly double the 10.6% rise on steel, to keep pace with the higher cost of the material. Exports of watches made from titanium, ceramic, and bronze from Switzerland rose 14.4% in the first half of 2026. None of this occurring for environmental reasons, but with titanium and steel carrying a smaller mining footprint than gold, the shift is inadvertently aiding the planet.
A new generation of materials is starting to reach the watch industry's edges. Mycelium leather, cultivated from fungal root structures in weeks rather than years, already appears in straps from small independent watchmakers in Indonesia and Europe. ID Genève's own materials lab has gone further still, developing algae-based packaging that composts in a home garden. Leica launched a hemp-based strap in late 2025. None of the seven houses ranked below use any of those yet, but upcycled plastic ocean waste has featured in both Richemont’s Panerai in its watch straps, and Oris’ watch dials. As gold sourcing comes under mounting regulatory and reputational pressure, luxury may begin to be found in new and unexpected sources.
Circularity here requires no invention, only a market, and one has arrived: Deloitte's 2025 study found 40% of Gen Z and millennial buyers likely to buy pre-owned within the year, and the 2025 tariff turbulence accelerated it: watches already inside the United States carried no import duty while new imports did. Every resold watch, though, is a watch not manufactured.
Note: Patek Philippe excluded due to insufficient public sustainability reporting
Among the seven most storied names in Swiss watchmaking, illuminem crowns Audemars Piguet, Richemont, and Rolex as the champions in sustainability. The striking podium is thus rounded out by a storied independent whose direct operations turn out to be among the cleanest in the field, a listed conglomerate with deep resources and the industry's most complete reporting apparatus, and the sector's most famously private house, whose real numbers outperform its reputation for silence.
The most significant finding: illuminem's Data Hub™ reveals that clean electricity has become close to a baseline expectation across the industry, with four of the seven houses now sourcing more than 84% of theirs from renewable supply. The real separation occurs further upstream in the unglamorous work of measuring and reducing a footprint that sits outside any single factory's walls.
1️⃣ Audemars Piguet (74%) has never marketed its sustainability work the way its rivals have. The numbers suggest it may not have needed to. It holds independently validated science-based targets, runs 86% renewable electricity, and under CEO Ilaria Resta, appointed in 2024, has embraced what she calls "radical openness," speaking publicly about its footprint for the first time and directing 2% of annual turnover to its foundations. AP reports a 7% emissions cut year-on-year, and the Data Hub confirms a footprint that is 98% upstream, consistent with direct operations that are among the cleanest of any house here.
2️⃣ Richemont (72%) leads on the sheer completeness of its sustainability apparatus. The Geneva group behind Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre pairs some of the most comprehensive records among its peers in the Data Hub™, with the lowest Scope 1 and 2 carbon intensity of any house here at 2.89, renewable electricity of 98%, and science-based emissions targets validated by the independent Science Based Targets initiative. It co-founded the Watch & Jewellery Initiative 2030 with Kering and committed to full gold traceability, a direction chairman Johann Rupert, long among the most outspoken luxury bosses on environmental limits, has driven from the top.
3️⃣ Rolex (69%) is the industry's most recognised name, and its numbers hold up better than its reputation for silence would suggest. The Data Hub™ shows renewable electricity at 88%, the best waste recovery rate in the field at 78%, and independently validated science-based targets. It has also funded global conservation through its Perpetual Planet Initiative and Awards for Enterprise since 1976, decades before sustainability entered a single annual report. What still holds it back is disclosure: with just two sustainability reports to its name in 2023 and 2025, gaps remain in its record where rivals report continuously. A house this large has room to close them going forwards.
4️⃣ Breitling (61%) is proof that scale is no excuse. Under CEO Georges Kern it became a certified B Corp in 2025, one of the only major watchmakers to clear that bar, secured independently validated science-based targets, and pushed traceability further than houses many times its size. The Data Hub™ uncovers the numbers behind the accolades: total emissions down 26% and Scope 3 down 29% in a single year, and renewable energy leaping from 53% to 73% in twelve months. Its all-scopes carbon intensity of 43.71 trails only Oris. Few companies in any industry have moved this fast.
5️⃣ Oris (58%) is the field's great overperformer relative to its size. With revenue a fraction of its rivals', the independent from Hölstein posts an all-scopes carbon intensity of 29.35, the lowest of any house here, alongside a spotless controversy record. Its Change for the Better programme beat its own three-year emissions target ahead of schedule, its Hölstein solar roof generates a large share of its own power, and its partnerships run from the Billion Oyster Project in New York to global reef restoration. "We're a lighthouse for sustainability in an uncertain world," says CEO Rolf Studer, and the performance data backs the claim.
6️⃣ Chopard (53%) remains a pioneer. Its move to 100% ethical gold in 2018 predated almost every comparable pledge in luxury, and the discipline still shows in the Data Hub: Scope 1 and 2 intensity of 3.70, second only to Richemont, and renewable energy at 85%. The question now is momentum, with the Data Hub™ revealing its renewable electricity share edging down from 89% to 84% between reporting years. For the house that made being first its signature, the challenge is to keep moving as the field catches up.
7️⃣ Swatch Group (35%) is the ranking's most telling case, because it reports comprehensively yet still finishes last. The Data Hub™ shows why disclosure alone is not enough: strong environmental and social scores sit beside a governance score of just 21.82, against Richemont's 67.02, the widest internal split in the field. That weakness became headline news in 2025, when activist investor Greenwood Investors mounted a public challenge to the Hayek family's tight grip on the board, a campaign the family roundly rejected. Renewable electricity of 53% is the lowest of any house reporting it, and no independent target validation appears against its name. For the owner of Omega and Blancpain, publishing data has not meant being held to it.
This ranking offers the most comprehensive study yet conducted of luxury watchmaking's sustainability transition,built on more than 300 environmental and nature-related KPIs across seven of the watchmaking industry's most storied names. It arrives at a moment when the stakes upstream have rarely been higher.
Rising demand for gold is driving a fresh mining rush into some of the world's most fragile places, clearing protected forest and poisoning rivers with mercury, and much of that gold enters global supply chains with its origin already lost. The metal in a watch case and the metal scarring a protected reserve can begin, indistinguishably, in the same unaccountable chain.
As regulators close in on unproven green claims and buyers increasingly ask where things come from before they ask what they cost, this ranking is offered as both a roadmap and challenge: to close the gap between the permanence these houses sell and the accountability that they too often withheld in the past.
"Today, sustainability is about business resilience," Iris Van der Veken, Executive Director and Secretary General of the Watch & Jewellery Initiative 2030, shares with illuminem. "In an increasingly complex environment shaped by evolving stakeholder expectations, regulatory requirements and supply chain risks, trust has become the currency that underpins long-term value. No single company can address these challenges alone. Through collective action, we can accelerate progress on the interconnected topics of climate resilience, nature and water stewardship, and inclusiveness. The future of luxury will be defined not only by what we create, but by how we create it: honouring craftsmanship, strengthening resilience, and safeguarding the integrity of our value chains."
Watchmaking has survived five centuries of empires, revolutions and reinvention, outlasting nearly everything it was built alongside. Its future rests less on the movement inside the case than on a question the industry has spent too long avoiding: whether permanence is truly worth anything if the ground beneath it wasn't.
📊 Download the report & dataset (300+ KPIs) on the sustainability of luxury watchmakers
illuminem ranks companies by sustainability maturity using a weighted mix of criteria:
All financial and sustainability data reflect the latest figures publicly reported by the companies ranked. The approach is deliberately both backward- and forward-looking, identifying companies that are leading – or rising fast. By normalising for industry and geography, the score offers the most universal measure of how far a company has travelled on its sustainability journey.
illuminem's Sustainability Data Hub is the most comprehensive dataset of its kind, with over 300 environmental and nature-related KPIs for over 12,000 companies, assembled into a single, structured view of corporate environmental performance. With a view that spans sectors, geographies, and years of disclosure history, and insights from the greatest experts and executives in the field, illuminem is uniquely positioned in the industry to create the most comprehensive report the luxury watch industry has ever seen.
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