Feeco is Providing Solutions and Value to Waste Streams
By Carlie Forsythe
Imagine your average compost heap. Items such as wilted lettuce leaves or leftover banana peels probably figure in the picture somewhere. Steel dust or unused industrial chemicals more than likely do not. For Green Bay company Feeco International however, metal dust and other wastes do have a place in the pile.
Feeco, which started in 1951 as a fertilizer equipment and engineering company, has grown progressively greener over the last two decades. Feeco has a strong interest in environmental management; it concerns itself more with renewable materials than renewable energy. Two of its main types of technology are thermal processing, as used in rotary dryers, kilns and coolers, and agglomeration, which goes hand in hand with thermal equipment.
Feeco has likened its work to a large-scale, high-quality version of composting. Many of Feeco’s projects involve keeping potentially valuable wastes such as metal dust, various chemicals and sludges out of local landfills, reusing them in environmentally-friendly ways instead of discarding them. This not only reduces land and water contamination, but also decreases both waste transportation and future clean-up costs.
Any company with a waste generation problem, from steel mills to municipalities to farmers, is a potential Feeco customer. Feeco has worked with companies everywhere from across the street to across the globe, from South Africa’s gold and diamond mines and Australian chicken farmers to the dairy farms and meat-packing plants of Wisconsin’s own Brown County.
Though there are several other companies working along similar lines, Feeco’s knowledge of fertilizer after 59 years in business puts it ahead of its competitors. Currently, Feeco employs between sixty and seventy people at its office and shop, and looks forward to further growth as the number of inquiries it receives from industries increases.
Popular perception long has been that business and environmental protection are about as compatible as Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow.
It doesn’t have to be that way, say those behind a still-new certificate program at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. The Environmental Management and Business Institute marries the studies of the two together.
“It used to be that you didn’t take business courses if you majored in environmental science, and you didn’t take environmental science courses if you majored in business,” says John Stoll, professor of public and environmental affairs at UWGB and co-director of EMBI.
FEECO proudly supports the 2nd annual Green Innovations 2010 hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay on April 22-23, 2010
Green Bay, WI (April 22, 2010) – FEECO International was originally founded to supply the fertilizer industry and has grown over the years to be a well known leader for offering equipment and solutions to companies based around an Eco-Centric viewpoint. During past 59 years FEECO has worked to develop a balance between the environment and their customer’s strategic positions. FEECO makes sure that the environment is held in high standards for the past, present, and future generations.
FEECO has developed solutions to minimize and control Phosphates from entering the watershed via Agricultural, Municipal, and Industrial processes.
Green Bay, WI (July 1, 2009)- FEECO an industry leader of fertilizer, material handling, and organic waste solutions is currently working with Brown County on the Brown County Waste Transformation Initiative (BCWTI). The principle of the project is to be able to take the county’s organic waste, process it and sell it around the world as nutrient-rich, pathogen-free fertilizer.
Bay Business Journal Vol 17 #3 (June / July 2009)
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Humans do it, animals do it, factories do it. Even cells do it.
Producing waste is just one of those unavoidable evils – right up there with facing our mortality and being accountable to the Internal Revenue Service. But what happens to all the waste we and our fellow biological beings produce, and – no pun intended — where do we go with it?
The Brown County Waste Transformation Initiative (BCWTI) has come up with a possible answer: Process it and sell it around the world as nutrient-rich, pathogen-free fertilizer nuggets.
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