A Wisconsin highway project helped turn an industrial leftover into a useful construction material. In 1990, Waupaca Foundry supplied about 20,000 tons of used foundry sand for a highway pilot project. Engineers wanted to see whether the material could work as fill instead of relying entirely on newly sourced material.
The experiment did not end with that first project. Twelve years later, Waupaca Foundry received a much larger contract tied to Highway 10 near Waupaca, Wisconsin. This time, the project called for 80,000 tons of foundry sand for highway construction.
