MADISON, Wisc. —  Each year, CheeseCon presented by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association and Center for Dairy Research brings together cheese, butter and whey industry professionals to network, attend educational seminars, explore the 75,000-square-foot exhibit floor and much more. During the 2025 CheeseCon, an educational session on wastewater management showcases new and evolving opportunities for dairy producers to reimagine wastewater treatment and end products. During the session, the Center for Dairy Research Director John Lucey offers in-depth insights on pathways for dairy producers to utilize organic materials as feedstocks, supporting industry contributions to a circular bioeconomy.

Lucey notes that coproducts are often land spread, which can result in negative impacts on the environment due to nitrogen, phosphorus and more materials leaching into the atmosphere, soil or groundwater. As producer and consumer sustainability concerns continue to grow and regulations become stricter, dairy producers need an alternative to land spreading. Rising financial considerations are hindering dairy wastewater reutilization, since treatment and drying are very expensive for dairy producers. As volumes get larger, producers must balance evolving and stricter sustainability goals with mounting financial concerns.

Waste treatment is typically very expensive, often offering little return on investment for dairy producers. As an alternative, Lucey says that high strength wastewater equates to organic, valuable feedstocks. He notes that producers have a clear opportunity to establish a lower carbon footprint in the feedstock industry, since cheese and whey protein have a much lower carbon footprint than corn and are traditionally more affordable feedstocks.

In the 1970s, the dairy industry developed membrane filtration solutions to produce whey protein products, which resulted in great success. As sustainability concerns grow and evolve, membrane filtration continues to become more popular with dairy producers to meet sustainability, production and efficiency goals. Lucey asks the audience: Can the industry replicate that effort to further utilize whey, but this time utilizing whey permeate as a feedstock for biofermentation into green chemicals?

The dairy industry is responsible for about 2% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Lucey says producers have an opportunity to positively impact the environment by utilizing whey permeate as a feedstock. Dairy producers can improve both soil and water resources by reducing land spreading of organic waste and minimizing the amount of that waste that goes to landfill; landfills represent around 17% of annual methane emissions.

The US produces 120 billion pounds of liquid whey and more than 1.4 billion pounds of dry permeate. By diverting such a large volume of organic materials from landfills through wastewater valorization, dairy producers can support a circular bioeconomy while creating new revenue streams.