One of the Waunakee Rotary Club’s newest members is the CEO of a business that recently relocated to Waunakee’s industrial park.
Jim Fitzpatrick has been working for Madison Environmental Resourcing Inc. since about 2005, when he moved to Waunakee.
At his classification talk on March 22, he told the club a little about the nonprofit company begun by University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, Meriter Hospital and SSM Health in 1985 to take medical waste out of hospitals.
The plant in Waunakee processes pharmaceutical  waste, sharps and other items for medical facilities within about a 150-mile radius of Madison. About a year ago, MERI moved to Waunakee from Madison.
Waste is first shredded, Jim said, then brought to high temperatures so it can be disposed as solid waste in landfills. Jim said a microwave process heats the waste to about 215 degrees for about an hour.  
The company moved to Waunakee after outgrowing its previous facility. It purchased another property there, but the city would not rezone the site for the use.
“Waunakee was probably the friendliest place to go,” Jim said.
It is located in the 25,000-square-foot building that formerly housed the Wisconsin Technical College Foundation.
Jim grew up in Iowa and has lived in Minnesota and Wisconsin. After attending a technical college for an engineering degree in Iowa, he received his bachelor’s at UW-Stout then an MBA from St. Thomas University.
He began in the pulp and paper industry as  general manger and operational manager, then worked as a consultant before landing the job at MERI.
For several years, he lived in Neenah, where he was a Rotarian, and in Park Falls.
Jim and his wife have four children, a son in Washington D.C., who works at Lockheed Martin, another son in Seattle, Washington, who is an investment banker at Baird, another son in Minneapolis who is a business banker and a daughter in Milwaukee who is a CPA.

 

Other news:
-The club provided two donations, one to the St. John’s Piecemakers and the other to Project Linus, which makes and donates 40 blankets per month to area hospitals.
-Next week’s speaker, Danielle Breidung, is a Waunakee High School graduate. A Rotary president in the Carolinas, she’ll talk about micro-lending in the Middle East.  

 

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Guests: Jean Hensen, Evie Schuetz and Barb Paar, guests of the club.  

 

Visiting Rotarians: None.

 

Birthdays: March 29, Scott Biba; April 1, Ken Pesik; April 2, Dan Evans; April 4, Ray Statz.

 

Anniversaries: March 31, Drew and Lolly Lawrence.

 

Greeters: March 29, Lori Derauf and Breck Dokken; April 5, Pat Durden and Fritz Durst; April 12, Taylor Endres and Gary Epping.