Severn Trent has been producing ‘pumpkin power’ this week by collecting up the unwanted spooky fruits and turning them into electricity.

The company asked members of staff to bring in their old Halloween pumpkins - that otherwise would have gone to landfill – so they could be fed to an anaerobic digestion plant to create clean energy.

Chris Jellett, commercial business manager, explained:

 “Millions of people buy pumpkins to decorate their homes for Halloween but many of those are just thrown away after the event. By using our anaerobic digestion plant we can make good use of those pumpkins – in fact one 600g pumpkin could power a lightbulb for 24 hours!”

Severn Trent’s anaerobic digestion plant is located in Coleshill and produces 2.4MW of energy a year – the equivalent of powering 4,000 homes for 12 months.

Chris Jellett continued:

“Pumpkins, like all food waste, are packed with energy which with a bit of ingenuity can be unlocked and turned into power.”

“The process works in a similar way to us eating food. Trucks full of food waste are emptied in to the machine which removes packaging and then chews it up and digests it, much like a human body.”

“The anaerobic digestion ‘tummies’ process different types of food waste. As that happens, methane gas is produced and collected on the top of the tank, without being released into the air. It’s then sent over to a machine called a combined heat and power unit (CHP), which turns it into green energy to power the works.”

Any leftover material can be used as fertiliser on local fields - the whole digestion process takes around 90 days from the plant to field.