Dairy cows consume by-product feeds, many farmers reuse water or manure, and milk processing results in a wide range of delicious and nutritious food items and ingredients. But there is also another piece to dairy’s recycling story: Cheese brine can be used to pretreat roads for winter weather.

As reported by Fox Weather, Green County in south central Wisconsin has been using cheese brine, a by-product of the region’s cheesemakers, to pretreat roads for two decades. The salty liquid helps activate road salt quicker so it can melt ice faster, said state Department of Transportation highway commissioner Chris Narveson.

The system provides an outlet for cheesemakers to put their by-product to use instead of disposing of it elsewhere while also helping the county use less road salt. In some cases, salt isn’t even needed after brine is applied to the roads, and Narveson said Green County uses the second-lowest amount of salt in the state.

While road salt is necessary to keep people safe when driving in winter weather, when used in large quantities, it can be corrosive to roads and cars, run off into nearby water sources, and accumulate in roadside vegetation. Many regions have experimented with new technology and other options to reduce salt use or runoff, such as porous pavement or various methods of anti-icing.

Different locations may use a brine solution, rock salt, or other liquids such as calcium chloride to pretreat roads. It is a proactive approach to limit snow and ice accumulation because the solution helps prevent snow from sticking to the pavement.

In Green County, the availability of salty cheese brine makes using it for pretreatment a no-brainer. Narveson said their supplier, Grande Cheese, mixes the brine to the department’s requirement of 22% salt so it flows through the trucks smoothly. It is filtered before they pick it up, again when it is moved into the department’s holding tank, when it goes into the truck, and when it goes onto the road, so Narveson said there is very little smell. Last winter, the county used 100,000 gallons of cheese brine on its roads.

Other locations have also used cheese brine for pretreating, but the practice requires reliable and cost-effective trucking of the brine from a cheese plant. Where possible, it is another great example of dairy production being used efficiently.