NORTHEAST WISCONSIN – Even as a fifth grader, Bryant Esch –  the corporate sustainability manager at Waupaca Foundry – said he knew his career would be spent working in some capacity with natural resources.

“I had a fifth-grade teacher who was absolutely fantastic,” he said. “This teacher made sure that we got outside. We would go into streams and collect aquatic bugs – put on the waders and do all different kinds of things. That definitely made the switch go off for me.”

Esch said something he didn’t quite expect, however, was ending up in the industry side of things.

Over his 35 years, Esch’s career has been focused on sustainable manufacturing – with the last 33 years spent at Waupaca Foundry.

The American Foundry Society (AFS) recently honored Esch for his work with the 2024 Childress-Loebler Lifetime Achievement Award.

According to the AFS, the award is presented to individuals who have dedicated their careers to improving the environment or employee health and safety in metal casting-related industries. 

Mike Nikolai – president, COO and CEO at Waupaca Foundry – said the foundry is proud to celebrate Esch’s accomplishments, noting that his leadership, innovation and commitment to excellence have “elevated Waupaca Foundry’s performance in sustainability while setting a new standard for the metalcasting industry.”

“This lifetime achievement award reflects Bryant’s unwavering dedication to advancing environmental, social and governance standards,” Nikolai said.

The journey to here

Though an Illinois native, Esch said he would spend his summers working in northern Wisconsin.

Even from a young age, he said the plan was for him to eventually move to Wisconsin – a plan that started with enrolling at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

“I started off with a paper science degree,” he said. “And if you’re familiar with that, back in the day, that was like a six-year chemical engineering degree crammed into four years with 100% placement.”

For some reason entering college, Esch said it “interested me.”

However, after spending one year in the program, he said he realized it wasn’t for him.

“I remember one day being in a class when we were talking about paper digesters, or some kind of piece of equipment, and all of a sudden I’m like, ‘This is not exactly my thing. It’s not getting me like I was hoping it would.’”

That very same day, Esch said he switched to a water resources (water chemistry option) degree – and “I loved it.” 

“For what I went to school for, there were only about 12 of us that graduated every six months, so it was a pretty small field at the time,” he said. “Most of those people ended up working for the DNR or at a lab somewhere.”

Esch said he imagined that was where he would end up as well until he had an opportunity to interview for an environmental coordinator position with Racine Plating Company – a family owned industrial machinery manufacturer in southern Wisconsin.

“I don’t know what it was about industry – it just grabbed me,” he said. “I had some friends who were also looking for positions and they would ask me, ‘why would you want to go work in industry? Why aren’t you going to work for the DNR, in a lab or academia?’”

Esch said nothing against any of those other careers – “they are all fantastic” – but something intrigued him about utilizing his degree in an industry setting.

“My response to them back then was, ‘Industry is where the action is, and if you really want to make an environmental impact, you go where the action is,’” he said. “I never regretted that decision for one second over the last 35 years.”

While working at Racine Plating, Esch said he recognized pretty quickly how the team of the smaller, family owned operation wore many hats.

“So even though my background was more with water resources and environmental chemistry, they had me doing quality control, regulatory compliance and I was running their wastewater pre-treatment system,” he said.

When his wife got a job in a different location, Esch said he ultimately left the job in Racine “so we could actually be a normal married couple.”

“Ultimately, long story short, I learned about an opportunity at Waupaca,” he said. “I went in for an interview, and when I walked through the plant for the first time – everything I had mentioned earlier about what grabbed me about industry was times 10 at Waupaca.”

Though in different areas of industry, Esch said many things he learned during his time at Racine Plating applied to his new role with Waupaca.

“I was fortunate to work under a very competent environmental manager by the name of Jeff Loeffler,” he said. “He was the first real environmental coordinator they had at Waupaca Foundry.”

Until focusing on the environment began getting traction in the early 1990s, Esch said they didn’t really have dedicated environmental professionals in the industry.

“They would say to some engineer, ‘there’s this environmental thing, why don’t you do this in addition to designing foundry equipment,’” he said. “By the time you got into the late ’80s or the early ’90s, it started to get recognized that there was such complexity in environmental regulation, and it was only going to be more with the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and all those things that were kicking in that you needed a specialist under your roof to help with those things.”

After working under Loeffler for 16 years, Esch said Loeffler moved to a different company, “and I basically assumed his role.”

Over the next three-plus decades, Esch said he supported Waupaca’s efforts toward moving the sustainable manufacturing dial forward.

During his tenure with the foundry, he led the company’s energy and decarbonization efforts at plants nationwide.

Some of his professional accomplishments include:

• Received the 2021 AFS Environmental, Health & Safety Service Award. This award is presented to individuals in the industry for dedication and service to help build and improve environmental, safety and health conditions within the metalcasting industry.
• Developed technical programming for national metalcasting conferences and industry events.
• Contributed to guidelines adopted in industry standards and provided stakeholder support in developing state/federal legislation.
• Served as a leading voice in sustainability for manufacturing and is a published author in trade and business platforms.
• Served as a member of the foundry’s environmental, health and safety committee.

Under Esch’s leadership, Waupaca Foundry achieved several sustainability benchmarks, including:

• Reducing its Scope 1 and Scope 2 energy intensity by 21% since 2010
• Preparing its first CDP report (FKA Carbon Disclosure Project) in 2015 – the first U.S. metal caster to do so
• Beneficially reusing 80% of spent foundry sand and 74% of all foundry by-products
• Reducing water use consumption by 71% over a 10-year period
• Helping the foundry become the first in the industry to publish an annual sustainability report, something it’s done since 2014
• Earning ISO 50001 energy management certification at its Plant 1 grey iron foundry in 2016

Though it may sound cliché, Esch said one of the things that has helped him achieve these benchmarks in his individual career and for the foundry, “is management commitment.”

“When I came here, it was really obvious right away that our management had a commitment to achieve certain things,” he said. “They really had this thought in their minds of being a good neighbor. And so here you are an environmental person, wanting to work on these things, and you find that you have a management team that is totally of the same thinking.”

With many of the foundry’s locations located in smaller, rural areas, Esch said Waupaca Foundry has always had a strong desire to be a good neighbor.

“Back in the day in the foundry industry, (focusing heavily on sustainability) was just not the common, normal thing to do,” he said. “So, to have a management team here – and not just one management team, but we had maybe an individual who was present who then would retire, and then the next person would come in – but we saw a tendency or a trend over a long period of time, which continues to this day, to have interest in these things.”

Esch said for somebody like him – who has focused his adult career on the environment – “it makes the job very fulfilling.”

“I don’t want to say easy, but it sure greases the skids to getting things done,” he said.

‘Things have definitely changed’

Looking back over his career thus far, Esch said “things have definitely changed” in relation to environmental challenges.

“You think back at all the environmental challenges that exist for society now, and you look back 20-30 years – back then, a big challenge was even something like recycling,” he said.

Esch said Waupaca Foundry really dove head first into those efforts and “made it a journey over multiple decades.”

“We’ve gotten to the point now where Waupaca Foundry is recycling 80-plus% of all its foundry byproducts,” he said. “I’m very proud of our team here and everything we’ve done over the years to get to that point – where the vast majority of everything actually goes into a beneficial reuse site somewhere.”

That being said, Esch said “there’s always room for improvement” as the foundry focuses on reaching 90% and beyond.

“To think that you could have even figured out how to get more than 10% to go somewhere useful, I mean, it seems like magic,” he said. 

‘A little bit more than I had to’

Receiving the 2024 Childress-Loebler Lifetime Achievement Award from the AFS, Esch said, “really meant a lot.”

Being honored by the largest trade organization in the industry in the U.S., he said, makes it even more rewarding.

“What’s very strong about that organization, other than their reach and footprint, is the fact that – for example, in the environmental health and safety committee structure that they have – there’s just a lot of things going on,” he said. “They are, in my opinion, and I think a lot of people would agree, the No. 1 source for foundry-related expertise in the United States.”

Esch said his participation with AFS and other industry- and environmental-related organizations, above and beyond his responsibilities in his role with Waupaca Foundry, is about going the extra mile.

“In my opinion, again, I’ve always had a lot of interest in environmental things, but I really want to have a beneficial impact for myself after I’m gone,” he said. “It’d be nice if the tally sheet in the sky would say ‘he did a little more than he had to, to try to do his fair share.’”

Esch said he’d be remiss if he didn’t do his part, with all the “other great pieces we have going on around here.”

“The team at Waupaca, and not just a management team, but the plant and technical expertise team around our facilities are driven to try to work together to get some kind of benefit,” he said. “I’ve gotten a lot of personal satisfaction from the things that we’ve done over the years. I’m really looking forward to other things that we can achieve. We just have to keep on doing what we’re doing, and look to do more than what regulations require.”

As he looks to inspire the next generation, Esch said he focuses on the legacy he hopes to leave behind in his field.

“You are not going to last forever,” he said. “So, if you are working on projects that you feel are important, who is going to take those up (after you retire)?”

Mentorship, like what he received from Loeffler when he first started at the foundry, Esch said, has also been an important focus for him.

“(Thinking about) ‘How do you first make sure that you have the best people in their respective fields that are available to your organization, and then people who strive to do something more than the minimum?’” he said.

Esch said it’s easy to sit in a chair, work on a report and send the report in.

Finding those people who are also focused on making noticeable improvements, he said, is even more important.

“(Having) people who are questioning, who are good at checking different references and doing their research and asking ‘why not? Why can’t we do these other things?’ and having a methodical and logical approach to putting all that information together to come up with solutions that you can offer to your team – is key,” he said. “If you have somebody that’s an environmental engineer, we don’t just want them to be a technician. We want them to be a manager and a facilitator to improve our environmental situation. And to be honest, I think we’ve done a really good job.”

As young adults look to where their path may lead them in terms of a career, Esch said he encourages them to “keep your eyes open.”

“You’ll be surprised – what you’re studying for and what you think your job is going to be, might be completely different when you get out there,” he said. “Keep your mind open. Like I ended up in industry and had absolutely no idea that I was going up in industry and have these opportunities that I had – that happens all the time.”