My Apple Juice founder Richard Paget gets to the core UK’s apple wastage problem

“Life would be boring if we all had the same taste,” says founder of My Apple Juice Richard Paget.

My Apple Juice, based in Hungerford, takes apples – from gardens and small orchards – turns them into juice and puts your house name on the label.

While this might make for a fantastic Christmas gift, the primary aim is to reduce wastage in the UK.

Around 90 per cent of apples in private gardens go to waste, says Mr Paget.

Initiatives like apple days and community orchard projects are growing appreciation for apples in the country, but there is still a huge amount of wastage.

Not only that, he says, there are around 4,500 varieties of apples in the UK.

But the average number of apples stocked in supermarkets is four.

Additionally, around 60 per cent of the apples that we eat and drink, we import. And the home crop that goes to waste, Mr Paget says, is about four times the size of what comes into the country.

“And the home crop is getting bigger,” he said.

“Because the traditional orchards are being grown, there are over half a million to a million apple trees being planted in people's gardens each year.

“People have no idea how much food is going to waste.”

He also says the taste that is produced from homegrown apples is incomparable.

“Because I sell apple juice I know full well that different people have different taste buds,” he adds.

“People bring us their apples and their juice tastes best of all because it comes from their apples.”

When he first started the apple pressing service around 14 years ago Mr Paget started small, collecting apples from his surrounding neighbours.

Now he’s looking to produce 110,000 bottles in one year’s harvest.

“I would complain about how many apples go to waste and my daughter said daddy stop whining and do something about it,” he laughs.

“So I got myself a small press and I went around the village that I lived in at the time and I gathered apples.

“I made around a thousand bottles from wasted apples in one month.

“Last year we did 90,000 but this year I would like to make between 100,000 and 110,000 bottles.

“Which would be over 150 tonnes.”