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Jewelry maker Pandora is taking a shine to lab-grown diamonds.

The Danish company announced it will soon stop selling mined diamonds in favor of the more affordable and sustainable alternative.

Mads Twomey-Madsen is Pandora's VP of Corporate Communications & Sustainability.

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

''This is another step in the journey we set out to become a low-carbon circular business. So no carbon in the sense that we cross our business, look at lowering the climate footprint. And when you look at that created diamonds versus mined diamonds, the typical difference is one tenth this. The carbon footprint of a lab created diamond is about a tenth of its mined counterpart. And so this will help us provide products that are better for the environment, better for the climate."

Pandora made 85 million pieces of jewellery and sold 50,000 diamonds in 2020.

The company's announcement reflect a change in consumers' taste.

Climate-conscious millennials are becoming increasingly attracted to the synthetic version.

That's partly because they’re more affordable – lab-grown diamonds are up to 10 times cheaper than mined ones, according to a report by Bain & Company.

And they’re also guaranteed not to have come from conflict zones and don’t cause as much environmental damage to extract

However, a study commissioned by the natural diamond industry in 2019 said lab-grown diamonds can sometimes end up being more carbon-intensive than mined ones.

Pandora's man-made diamonds will be made using technology in which a hydrocarbon gas mixture is heated to over 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, spurring carbon atoms to be deposited on a small seed diamond, growing into a crystal layer by layer.

''So the the question about climate and CO2 footprint with lab created diamond is all about the energy that is used for creating the diamonds. So it's true that it requires quite a lot of energy to produce the diamond, but if that energy comes from renewable energy, solar panels, wind turbines, the carbon footprint is low. And so for the diamonds that we bring to the market already today, they've been produced using 60% renewable energy. And when we plan to go with a global launch next year, we expect that this will be down to 100% or up to 100% renewable energy. So that means that the carbon footprint is about a tenth of a comparable mind diamond. So it's all about the energy use.''

Pandora's new collection of lab-grown diamonds will be launched initially in the United Kingdom and will be available in other key markets in 2022.

The company also said mined diamonds already in stores would continue to be sold.