Cut Glass: Green Jobs for Female Inmates

sustainable futures

Behind the shiny glass windows at an anonymous Garden City office park, Camille Doughty is pushing discarded wine bottles through a diamond blade wet saw. She removes the skinny tops and passes the bottoms to Lupe (last name withheld), who methodically smoothes and rounds the fresh glass edges, first with 100 grit sand paper.

Lupe smoothes and smoothes until it's fit to drink from.

This small factory is a young nonprofit called Sustainable Futures. It's a spinoff of the Green Foundations Building Center, an environmentally conscious building supplier, with a storefront next door.

Doughty, recently released from the East Boise Community Work Center, and Lupe, the de facto crew boss who remains incarcerated, are some of the first employees at what founder Lisa Scales imagines as a harbinger of the new, green economy.

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