Wisconsin Department of Labor Secretary Roberta Gassman said energy efficiency, new green jobs and worker training initiatives would be the key to a slow but steady recovery from the current recession, following a tour Tuesday of Teel Plastics, a Baraboo firm which claims to be poised for growth following a year with no net job losses.

Gassman said much could be learned from Teel's example, especially following the company's 2007 move to its new headquarters, which was built using a number of energy-efficiency and environmentally conscious techniques.

For example, plant engineer Chris Mosher said the company had managed to cut its wastewater output from 500,000 gallons per day to 75,000, a reduction of about 85 percent.

The new facility also implemented "better than the standard" systems for lighting, heating and powering its operations. The systems save the firm 61 cents per building square foot, and the plant also emits 715 fewer tons of carbon dioxide per year than it would with standard engineering, Mosher said.

Teel recycles plastics from its own production processes, as well as scrap materials sent in by customers, Teel chairman Jay Smith said.

Bill Cannady, the company's director of manufacturing and logistics, said the company had acquired "a significant number" of new customers over the past year, and was seeing order volumes from long-standing customers recovering as well.

Gassman also toured Reedsburg's Wisconsin Specialty Protein, which produces nutritional supplements from organic whey proteins. The company started in 2008 and has flourished despite the bad economy.

Tera Johnson, CEO of Wisconsin Specialty Protein, whose employee base of about 20 is small but projected to grow, said last year that she owed her success to the mix of small organic farms in the area and the dairy infrastructure already in place.

"It's very special what we have here," she said. "I couldn't do this in California."

Johnson's green-built plant includes a heat recovery system to save on energy costs, and she said her business was "a great example of how manufacturers can benefit from efficiency and conservation efforts."

Gassman called the two businesses perfect examples of practices she and other members of Governor Jim Doyle's staff would like to see spreading further.

"The future of Wisconsin is entrepreneurship, creativity, and taking all these new ideas an applying them in businesses where we're making products that we can sell all over the world," Gassman said.