A Marlborough juicing service has prevented 35 tonnes of apples going to waste this year alone.

My Apple Juice, at Warren Farm in Savernake, is run by Richard Paget and has been going for four years.

It offers people with apple trees in their garden the chance to turn their crop into juice, which is bottled up and labelled with their house name. He charges £2 a bottle for the service.

“I was bought up in Somerset and my parents grew cider apples so I’ve been round apple trees more or less from the year dot, and over the years I was lamenting how many apples go to waste,” Mr Paget said.

“Ninety per cent of all apples in private gardens go to waste and I think that’s largely inertia. So about five years ago my daughter said ‘daddy stop whinging and do something about it’.

“People bring their apples in and they are weighed and have individual documentation so we can track them through the process, because other people take in apples and then you get juice from the general pot but being able to have a guest and say ‘this juice came from this tree’ has a level of connection.

“Ten kilos of apples will make you over seven bottles. This year started tentatively and kept on growing so, on target, I should have done 25,000 bottles.”

The company also runs The Apple Juice Project, which allows schools, charities and community groups to bring in apples and buy the juice at a discount rate so they can sell it to raise funds.

Mr Paget said: “We’re working with local schools, so primary schools will bring a job lot of apples to us and then we will do the whole process and put the school name, even the logo, on the label for a discount. The school sells those bottles on and the children see where their food comes from.”

Usually Mr Paget would expect to be pressing apples from August to mid-December but because of the cold weather in March this year he will be making juice well into January.

For more information, visit www.myapplejuice.co.uk or call 07825 372225.