This is an excerpt from a column posted at BizOpinion
It’s no secret foundries not only use a lot of energy, but they also create a lot of waste. With that in mind, Waupaca Foundry, which has three plants in Waupaca and one each in Marinette, Indiana and Tennessee, is doing more than its fair share to lessen that impact. The company has a robust sustainability initiative that has earned kudos from organizations and state and federal governments.
“At a foundry, you have a lot of opportunities to look at sustainability initiatives,” says Bryant Esch, environmental coordinator of Waupaca Foundry Inc. “We use a lot of energy – just think about how we need to take a bunch of metal, heat it to super hot temperatures to melt it – so when we began looking at ways to be more sustainable, energy usage was the first area we touched.”
That led to a heat reclamation project that captures waste heat used to melt metal and runs it through an air exchanger to heat its plants during the cold winter months.
“In the old days, a lot of heat just went out the top of the building. Now we capture that heat and use it in our buildings,” Esch says.
Waupaca Foundry first began looking at sustainability issues more than 10 years ago. “We’ve been fortunate to a very pro-active management team that wants to do the right thing when it comes to the environment,” Esch says.
