Glass. We drink from it, eat off of it and look through panes of it. So ubiquitous that we barely notice it’s there. It becomes invisible.
But for the artisans and employees who work at Crisil, a glass-making workshop based in the highlands of Cochabamba, Bolivia, its impact on daily life is perfectly clear.
Crisil is a family-run business founded in 1991 by the Bustos family, who wanted to support the Cochabamba community where unemployment ran high and families struggled just to find food. Based on fair trade principles including fair pay for work, respect for the environment and good working conditions, it now employs roughly 100 people in jobs ranging from sorting recycled glass to hand-blowing each tumbler, bowl, vase and goblet with expertise and precision.
As the company’s reach has grown globally, so has its effect on the community. Not only does it export to countries such as Canada, the U.S. and Australia today, but it also provides an income for used-bottle collectors, some of the neighbourhood’s poorest residents. Anyone can collect glass from garbage heaps and restaurant bins and sell it to the factory. Collectors are paid by weight.
Diana Livia-Drnovscek, Product and Quality Assurance Specialist, says she loves the new wine glass goblets that were just released this fall. She says these pieces are a refined update to the Crisil collection, with a more elegant shape than the pieces designed for the every day. They also have a stem – which requires a new step and a dedicated glass-maker for the task.
“Now you can have water or wine in these beautiful, fair trade glasses,” she says.
There are other reasons Crisil impresses us:
- They test the recycled glass to make sure harmful chemicals like lead and cadmium don’t contaminate the finished pieces.
- Crisil offers benefits to employees like free meals for trainees, health insurance, transportation costs and even retirement funding. Each family receives a Christmas hamper full of food.
- Employees are paid on time and as promised, a rarity in some other local glass factories but a must for a fair trade business.
- Each and every glass product Crisil produces is blown by a master of the craft.
Because each piece is handcrafted, you’ll notice something interesting about Crisil’s products: tiny bubbles trapped in the glass. So how are the glass products produced? Here’s the play-by-play:
Collect and wash. People in the neighbourhood collect discarded glass, including bottles and broken windows, from landfills and waste bins then sell the material by the kilogram to Crisil. Glass must be clear. The recycled glass is stored in a pile behind the factory and then washed, usually by women.
Melt. Glass is melted in a furnace that runs 24 hours a day so it doesn’t drop below 1,300°Celsius (The furnace requires significantly more fuel to heat up if allowed to cool overnight). Employees work around the clock in eight-hour shifts to put the super-heated furnace to good use.
Blow. Crisil employs a small number of maestros who blow the melted glass freeform or into moulds. The artisans blow into a rod, causing the glass to expand, before it is plunged into water. The top of the glass is then cut off to create the glass lip. In one shift, these talented men can blow thousands of pieces! (To see how maestros blow Crisil’s glass, check out this YouTube video.)
Move and pack. The glasses are finally placed on a conveyer belt that moves them through a machine which slowly cools them down over a couple of hours so they don’t shatter. Employees pack each piece in paper before shipping to stores like ours.
What happens to all those shards of glass that have been shorn off the tops? They’re recycled and used again!
Before holiday party season starts, consider a set of new Crisil glasses, goblets, tumblers or bowls.