A West Devon business threw its doors open to customers last week, as it celebrated 15 months of booming trade. Peninsula Waste Savers, which is based in North Tawton, is the brainchild of Trish Carrington and John Mann, who farm at Sourton. And what began as a sideline to their farming business is now rapidly taking over their lives. The idea was originally conceived after Trish and John asked West Devon milk company Peninsula Milk if they had any waste milk they could feed their pigs. Trish said: ?They said to us ?Where have you been all our lives?? John would go up and get waste milk from them, but it turned out it was classed as a transfer of waste and we had to get a licence to deal with waste. ?One day we went up there and saw all the plastic bottles and found they all went to landfill ? then there was the suggestion we could take the plastics as well.? Trish and John made investigations, invested in a small baler and started taking the plastic milk bottles, selling them on for recycling. Soon, the small machine was exchanged for a bigger one, then another, as the business began to grow. In the 15 months they have been in businesses they have moved premises twice and are now based at The Barton near North Tawton. Trish said: ?What we do is offer a service to businesses and tradespeople, collecting waste packaging materials; that?s every kind of plastic you can think of, including plastic pipes, aluminium cans, paper, pamphlets etc. ?We bring them back here and all the waste is sorted into different types. We have this mega-munching baler and we process it all and send it off to different recycling centres. ?Everything that comes into our warehouse is recycled, nothing goes to landfill.? Trish said she and John were delighted with the inroads they had made into the business community, which was increasingly concerned that waste was recycled. ?We are picking up from an enormous amount of businesses in Tavistock now, we do the pannier market, a couple of hotels, wine shops, florists, but we also do major West Country clients, like Ginsters, Dairy Crest and Peninsula Milk. ?We had the open day to show all these businesses how we process and separate their waste. We made up a display of all the different kinds of plastics and what they could eventually be turned into once they?d been recycled.? In the 15 months they have been trading, they have processed almost 2,000 tons of waste which otherwise could have gone into landfill sites. Trish said she also had good feedback from companies on how cost-effective recycling waste could be. ?One company told me that in six weeks, they had saved £18,000, because they had previously been paying one of the big national companies to take their stuff away.? ?It?s incredibly hard work ? we are full time farmers, we have 600 livestock to look after as well, but we?ve kind of developed a passion for recycling ? I probably only put my dusbin out once every five weeks now! ?And with most businesses you get your irritations here and there, but with this everyone thinks you are wonderful, so it?s a really nice thing to do! The clients we have are always fun and nice to deal with ? it makes such a difference.?
