British milk producer Trewithen Dairy has teamed up with food waste recycling provider Andigestion to bolster its environmental credentials, by ensuring that as much of the dairy’s food waste as possible is saved from landfill and disposed of in a more efficient manner.
Cornwall and Devon’s biggest bottler of milk, Trewithen Dairy currently processes approximately 1 million litres of milk every week.
With aspirations to make its farm as green as possible, the company has teamed up with Andigestion’s – the operator of the UK’s first food-only anaerobic digestion plant – to collect and treat local food waste, which is fed back into the national electricity grid to power local homes. The plant also produces a liquid fertiliser for use by local farmers in place of carbon intensive mineral fertilisers.
“We’re trying to improve our recycling across the farm and Andigestion is forming a really helpful part of that,” said James Webster, despatch manager for Trewithen Dairy. “We have been working with Andigestion to dispose of more of our wasted products and we’re currently recycling dairy waste and food waste from our staff canteen.”
And Carly Kilbey, Andigestion’s business development manager, added: “Anaerobic digestion is a cost-effective way to dispose of food waste, costing around a third of the price of sending food waste to landfill. So far the team at Trewithen Dairies have recycled about 1 tonne of food waste per week, which would have previously been sent to general waste disposal. This equates to the production of approximately 900kg of nutrient-rich farm fertiliser for use by local farmers and 396kWH of energy for use by local homes – a fantastic achievement!”
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