MILWAUKEE — Manufacturing has deep roots in the state of Wisconsin.
Sellars Absorbent Materials has been in the Milwaukee area for decades. Since its start, the focus has always been on sustainability in its products.
The company is a family-owned business that has been around for decades. It creates products like wipes, towels, tissues, rags and more. They’re items you can find at places like Target, Home Depot, Menards, etc.
Sellars Absorbant Materials CEO Tom Sellars said it is a manufacturing company at its core, but what he believes what makes it shine is the company's drive for sustainability.
“It’s always at the core that we want to deliver high performance products that are made with recycled input,” Sellars said.
The company is able to take recycled paper and re-processes it into things like kitchen towels or rags. It’s a big part of its process and one of the leading ways it said it brings sustainability into its everyday work.
“We’re taking low quality recycled paper and boxes and using that to make the best performing products,” Sellars said.
When you think of manufacturing, you don’t always think of sustainability. But Sellars said as a family business, it was instilled in him and his siblings when they were young.
He said he hopes to spread that same message throughout the company and to their customers.
“It comes back to a belief system actually,” he said. “It’s not only sustainability, but it’s a broader topic on stewardship. And it’s being responsible for the people that we are stewards of and our resources that we are stewards of. And so, we grew up in an environment that was important to our parents and they passed that on to us. We look at it as a broader form of stewardship of not only how we treat our people but how we treat the planet.”
The company was recently a contestant in the “Coolest Things in Wisconsin” contest and made it into the “Sweet 16” with one of its paper towel products.