ABOVE PHOTO: Dale Evans and Anna Evans Bartz, front row center, of EVCO Plastics meet with students and professors in UW-Stout’s plastics engineering lab after donating $100,000 to support projects that improve sustainability within the industry.
National and worldwide efforts to improve sustainability in the plastics industry are receiving a boost from University of Wisconsin-Stout, thanks to a major donation by EVCO Plastics.
The Wisconsin-based company, which has 12 facilities in two states and two foreign countries, has given $100,000 to the university’s plastics engineering program. The money will be used to help students conduct sustainability research, including providing materials for their projects.
EVCO Chairman and CEO Dale Evans told students to “change the world” recently when he visited campus to make the donation and learn about their research in the Plastics Engineering Labs.
“We’re happy to give back. Too many different materials go into the waste stream. We’re trying to fix that and further the success of engineering students and the plastics industry as a whole,” said Evans, a 1973 UW-Stout graduate in industrial technology.
The company, with headquarters in DeForest, has supported the UW-Stout program for more than a decade. It also is providing students access to EVCO experts during the research process to help answer technical questions and “to deepen and support their knowledge and understanding. Our goal is to catalyze more processor industry investment in this space,” Evans said.
Promoting sustainability is one of the goals of UW-Stout’s plastics engineering program, said Professor Wei Zheng.
“We are grateful for the continuous support from EVCO. In fact, this is the first donation we have received that specifically focuses on the plastics recycling. The funding will surely propel us to investigate the challenges and opportunities of various recycling technologies,” said Zheng, program director.
