FIRST it was dumped in landfill sites - now thousands of tonnes of rubbish scheduled for recycling is being trucked to plants in Essex, Reading and London.

But today environment bosses defended the plans, saying it was either that or dumping the material in landfill sites.

Hampshire waste chiefs have come up with the new scheme to recycle the county's burgeoning waste mountain following the scandal revealed in the Daily Echo earlier this year which saw tonnes of recyclable waste tipped into rubbish dumps.

The plan is to transport the waste to sites outside the county to cope with the growing mounds of recyclable rubbish until a new £10.5m plant is built in Alton by mid-2004.

But the plans have come under fire from green campaigners, who have accused county bosses of bad planning and letting people down.

Currently, the county's only materials recycling facility (MRF) is in Portsmouth, which sorts about 61,000 tonnes and is unable to cope with all the recyclable rubbish being collected in Hampshire.

The problem of disposing of the county's recyclable waste will get worse this year when Southampton City Council and Gosport Borough Council both begin kerbside collection schemes.

Now the plan is to truck 30,000 tonnes of dry recyclables to MRFs at London, Reading and Rainham in Essex.

There was outrage earlier this year when thousands of householders across the county learnt that 1,300 tonnes of rubbish was being landfilled when the county ran out of capacity to recycle it.

Officials decided not to tell householders, who kept on recycling. The blunder was particularly embarrassing for Hampshire County Council, which prides itself on its award-winning waste credentials.

Friends of the Earth's south-east region waste campaigner Alison Walters said the county should try to transport its growing waste mountain by rail to cause less harm to the environment.

She said councils should put recycling facilities in place before embarking on ambitious recycling projects or there was a danger people would become cynical about recycling.

She said: "Going out to Essex is quite ludicrous. There has got to be investment in local facilities to deal with waste and councils should take that into consideration. It is disappointing there has been no joined-up thinking."

Southampton City Council's environment spokesman Councillor Richard Williams said the root cause of the problem was the refusal by residents in Nursling, Southampton, to allow a waste recycling plant to be built in their area in the late 1990s.

He said: "It is less environmentally unfriendly than dumping rubbish in landfill sites. We would have had the capacity if the plant at Nursling had been built.

"Friends of the Earth do have a point, but you have to look at the problem from where we are now. It is not ideal, but if we had had the commitment from the people in Nursling then we would not be transporting material to Essex. We are doing the right thing in difficult circumstances."