A SPRING water company that bottles at source from a South Hams meadow is celebrating a sustainable summer.

Devonia has sold 250,000 bottles of water and reused an impressive 201,000 of them.

It is the only spring water company in the south of England that focuses on reusing glass bottles again and again.

Washing and refilling the bottles uses just six per cent of the energy required to recycle glass – reducing CO2 by 94 per cent. And there is no plastic pollution going into the world’s oceans.

Owner Neil Graham said: “More and more hospitality businesses are keen to have green credentials and they are able to tick a lot of boxes by purchasing still and sparkling spring water in our branded glass bottles, which are then collected by us to be washed and reused.

“Our highly sustainable business model is simple and more and more customers are buying into it.”

Devonia’s water comes from a spring that bubbles up on the edge of a meadow near the twin villages of Beeson and Beesands, less than mile from the sea and some three miles from Start Point.

The well was capped and secured years ago. It is believed to have been the main source of fresh water for the two villages, and supplied many sailors over the generations who stopped in the lee of Start Point to shelter from storms at sea.

Devonia’s water is slightly hard and comes through a limestone aquifer which stretches all the way from Wales. It boasts a natural, soft taste and is tested regularly for purity and mineral content.

Since it launched 18 years ago, Devonia has reused 2.2million bottles and saved nearly 150,000 kilograms of glass from going into landfill – the equivalent weight of more than 12 double decker buses.