A dustcart driver has lifted the lid on how green waste has also been dumped in landfills under Hampshire's flagship recycling scheme.

The whistleblower revealed he had been told "dozens of times" to take lorry-loads of garden and kitchen waste to the nearest tip, instead of a composting centre.

Councillors who oversee the contractor, Hampshire Waste Services, which gets rid of the county's rubbish, say they had no idea this was happening.

The latest details come a week after it was revealed that 1,300 tonnes of paper, cans and plastic bottles have been buried in landfill sites.

Officials at Project Integra, the county's waste group, say the figure is less than 2% of household rubbish recycled across Hampshire, which has one of the best recycling rates in the country.

And they are urging householders to continue sorting out their waste for recycling, saying no more will go into landfill.

They say the green scheme has been a victim of its own success and there is not enough capacity at its only plant in Portsmouth to process the waste.

A new material-recovery facility (MRF) is planned near Alton, which, it is hoped, will solve the problem by mid-2004.

But the dustcart driver revealed it is not only "dry recyclables", that have been been tipped but also green waste.

Garden waste is supposed to be taken to composting plants at Chilbolton, Down End, Fareham and Little Bushy Warren, near Basingstoke.

But the driver said: "They can't handle it all at the moment. So drivers are told to pick it up and take it down the tip."

The driver, who has since left the company, claimed to have been told to do this "more than 100 times" and his truck carried about seven tonnes of bulky green waste each trip.

"And I'm not the only one. I know of at least three or four other drivers who had had to do it, too. It's going on everywhere."

The recycling scheme is run by Project Integra, a partnership of city and district councils in Hampshire, plus the county council and Hampshire Waste Services.

Its chairman, Southampton councillor, Richard Williams, said he did not know green waste had been tipped other than when it was contaminated.

"As far as I am aware, composting of green waste is not an issue that has bought to my attention other than we want to do more."

But Steven Read, chief executive of Project Integra, confirmed green waste had gone into landfill although he said the majority was composted.

He said: "That is why the Government has given us £2.3m to expand our facilities at one of our sites so we can compost an additional 30,000 tonnes of green waste a year."

Mr Read said about 60,000 tonnes of green waste was composted yearly in Hampshire. He could not put a figure on how much was tipped.