THE Holsworthy based food waste recycling company, Andigestion, have significantly increased the size of its fleet recently to keep up with growing demand.

The company have invested more than £100,000 in additional vehicles to help keep pace with the rise in householder’s enthusiasm for food waste recycling.

The increase in their fleet of trucks will help the business cope with the growing demand from Devon’s residents for eco-friendly food waste recycling.

The company now operates four trucks in Devon and has recently taken on three new drivers in the county.

Jason Ward, commercial manager at Andigestion, said: “We now have a range of vehicles on the road in Devon ranging from 3.5 tonne trucks to the larger 18 tonne lorries, and all are kept busy making regular collections of food waste from thousands of homes and businesses throughout the county.

“It’s been fantastic to see the public really embrace the concept of food waste recycling and the fact that we’ve had to increase our fleet to keep pace with demand really underlines how keen people are to reduce the amount of food that is needlessly sent to landfill.

“When you think that over Christmas, it was estimated that the UK threw away approximately two-million turkeys and 74-million mince pies, it’s not surprising that demand for responsible food waste recycling is growing.”

Andigestion’s Holsworthy plant currently recycles approximately 70,000 tonnes of Devon’s residential and commercial food waste to produce electricity, which is fed back into the national grid.

The by-product is a liquid fertilizer that local farmers can use in place of carbon-intensive mineral fertilisers.

The company recently launched a ‘wheelie bin’ food waste collection service for Devon, which enables businesses such as restaurants, cafés, hotels, schools and colleges to dispose of their food waste in a clean, green and eco-friendly way.

The new service was welcomed by Tiverton and Honiton MP Neil Parish who attended the wheelie bin launch at Shebbear College, Beaworthy — Devon’s first school to sign up to the new scheme.

The treatment has benefits for food waste producers and farmers.

Treating waste through our anaerobic digestion process is significantly cheaper than sending it to a landfill site or a composting plant.

For farmers, the end result of the process is a nutrient rich digestate biofertliser which can be spread to land to reinvest its nutrient content into new crop growth. Digestate is a black liquid similar to the thickness of gravy.

For more information, visit www.andigestion.co.uk