IT'S A towering success story - in every sense of the word. Hampshire's rubbish recycling project Integra celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

By any measure, the statistics are mind boggling.

Since its inception, the amount of rubbish recycled - ten million tonnes - would fill Saints' St Mary's Stadium to the brim a staggering five times.

Or, if you prefer, if the rubbish was loaded into articulated lorries, the queue would stretch from Southampton to the Scottish city of Edinburgh - and back.

A recent government report cited Hampshire County Council and Eastleigh Council as two of the most successful rubbish collecting authorities in the country.

Eastleigh now recycles 31 per cent of its household waste with Hampshire on 27 per cent, New Forest on 24 per cent, Fareham on 21 per cent and Winchester on 18 per cent - all beating the national average of 17 per cent.

Only Southampton lagged behind the national target at 13 per cent.

It was not always so. Ten years ago Hampshire, along with every county in the United Kingdom, was facing a growing rubbish crisis.

Millions of tonnes of waste was being dumped in landfill sites - not only in Hampshire itself but in neighbouring counties and far away Essex.

It was a situation which could not continue. Landfill space was rapidly being used up and with green issues rising to the top of the political agenda, it was decided that Hampshire's eleven district councils and two unitary authorities, Southampton and Portsmouth should join forces to try and tackle the problem.

From these beginnings Project Integra was born.

As the name implies, the idea was to try to tackle Hampshire's waste problem by "integrating" the disposal strategies of local authorities across the county.

The ambitious strategy had two aims. One was to reduce the dependence on burying waste in expensive landfill sites.

The other was to beef-up the amount of rubbish that residents recycled. The results have been spectacular.

Hundreds of thousands of households now have one of the best recycling records in the country with with 25 per cent of the county's waste now being recycled.

Hampshire also has two materials recovery facilities, three centralised green waste composting sites, 26 household waste recovery centres and more than 1,600 recycling banks.

Materials that can be recycled include paper, card, newspapers, food and drink cans and plastics.

Around 64,000 tonnes of materials are currently collected each year for recycling and turned into new products.

They are now used to make items as diverse as garden furniture and car upholstery.

The success story has also resulted in Hampshire being awarded £5m from the government to spend on boosting the quantity and quality of recyclable materials which are gathered by both household waste recycling centres and kerbside collection areas.

Former chairman of Project Integra and Southampton City Councillor Richard Williams said the project had been a resounding success.

He said: "The whole project is basically trying to ensure that the whole of Hampshire has a consistent approach to waste management.

"To give an example, Hampshire now produces 13 per cent of all coke bottles which are recycled in the country."

That's not the end of the story. In Portsmouth, the city's Materials Recovery Facility has in the last six years processed 271,000 tonnes of waste - all of which has been recycled to make new products.

Alton's long-awaited MRF is also up and running, and about 85,000 tonnes a year of so called "dry" recyclables - card, paper and newspapers - will be recycled.

Other projects in the pipeline include the production of a trio of energy recovery facilities across the county.

They will be able to convert waste which is non-recyclable into green power which will reduce the county's dependence on fossil fuels.

The first of the three was opened by the Princess Royal in Basingstoke in September 2003. At the end of last year Marchwood's burner on Southampton Water started operating and Portsmouth is awaiting completion of its new incinerator.

The three power plants, costing a total of £110m, will process 420,000 tonnes of waste every year.

Even the ash and ferrous metals which are produced in the burning process will be recycled.

Steve Read, executive officer of Project Integra, said: "It is a remarkable success story.

"It is a rare example of a strong and durable partnership between a group of councils, it has delivered what it first set out to do and has made Hampshire an internationally know example of good practice in waste management.

But it is also about the people of Hampshire who have risen to the challenge of recycling and composting.

"Project Integra was set up to prevent a waste crisis and to find a more sustainable way of dealing with Hampshire's household rubbish.

"Back then, it was predicted that we would run out of landfill in parts of Hampshire in ten to 15 years. We were right.

"Of course, the world has moved on since 1995. Back then, we were dealing with 738,000 tonnes of rubbish a year.

"This year, the total may top 900,000 and could reach a million tonnes in 2010. We now have European legislation covering disposal of things like tyres, electrical equipment and old cars.

"Ten years on, most households in Hampshire have recycling collections and increasingly garden waste collection services from their kerbside.

"We have 26 household waste recycling centres whose popularity continues to rise.

"With the bins, banks and facilities in place we are giving more emphasis to supporting the real heroes of this story - the people of Hampshire who separate out their recyclables, compost at home and take stuff to banks, charity shops and the like.

"We are always amazed at the number of people who recycle everything they can and ask us for opportunities to do more."