A £5m state-of-the-art facility for the county which transforms food waste into compost is up and running.

We were given an exclusive peek inside the Agrivert plant, in Ardley, which will deal with food and garden waste for the county.

It took five months to build and will be capable of recycling 40,000 tonnes of green waste – which would have gone into landfill – to produce 20,000 tonnes of compost every year.

Two further plants, which will produce energy from food waste, are in the pipeline – one in Yarnton and a third is likely to be in Wallingford.

It is hoped the plants will eventually boost recycling across the county to 55 per cent.

Agrivert chief executive officer Alexander Maddan said: “We are taking out a lot of waste from the system that would go into landfill and we are making something from it.

“Everyone in Cherwell has a brown bin and that creates the equivalent of 1,500 clean kilometres of motoring a year.”

At Ardley, waste is shredded and put in a tunnel where air is pumped in to help it break down.

Each tunnel can hold up to 300 tonnes of waste and is given 20 days to decompose before being moved outside to break down further for another eight weeks.

Joe Pickford leases part of his Ashgrove Farm to the firm and has already seen the benefits.

The father-of-two uses the compost on his 700 acre farm.

He said: “Cherwell needed somewhere within 5km of junction 10 – they were looking for a site for Agrivert and came to me.

“I jumped at the chance because the compost is so good.

“I take 6,000 tonnes of compost a year and when it’s fully producing it will create 20,000 tonnes a year and will be sold to other farms.”

Ian Hudspeth, cabinet member for growth and infrastructure at the county council, praised the composter, but said the move would not negate the need for an incinerator, which could be built less than a mile away.

He said: “This is a fantastic facility that will perform a key role in reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill in Oxfordshire, while providing quality fertiliser for local agriculture.

“Local authorities are increasingly being called upon to find alternatives to landfill and will have to foot a considerable bill in the form of landfill tax if they fail to act.”