HOUSEHOLDERS in Wiltshire, Dorset and Hampshire who need to get rid of builders' rubble, garden waste and general rubbish can take advantage of a new service.

A company called Hippo Waste has been set up in Hampshire to provide a rubbish collection and disposal service.

Hippo Waste provides customers with a yellow polypropylene bag, in one of two sizes, which they fill over a period of time.

When the bag is full, they call the company and it sends one of its lorries to take the bag away.

Bags are taken to a local waste transfer station, which will recycle as much of the waste as possible and dispose of the rest.

Both the midi one-yard bag and the mega one-and-a-half yard bag can hold up to one tonne of waste.

The company says it aims to "revolutionise the way we deal with household, garden and building waste replacing the need to hire bulky metal skips".

It adds that it is committed to the environment and works to ensure that "whatever can be recycled is recycled".

The idea is the brainchild of builder and operations director of Hippo Waste James Judd.

"Having been in the building trade for more than ten years I knew about the problem of waste disposal and how inconvenient it was to hire skips," he said.

"On a trip to Europe I saw some builders in a narrow busy street disposing of rubble in bags that were then collected.

"This is the standard method they use abroad to dispose of waste and I thought it would be a great idea to introduce a similar system into the UK."

The company's chairman is Stephen Noar who founded Denplan, which he sold in 1993 to PPP Healthcare.

Mr Noar said: "When James returned and ran the idea past me I immediately saw its potential, but I realised that what we needed to provide our customers with was not just the system, but the service.

"We are a wholly owned, managed and maintained company dedicated solely to the collection and disposal of waste.

"We supply the bags, collect the waste and dispose of it and because we are in control of the entire process, we can ensure that what can be recycled is recycled, so we are not just negligently adding to landfill sites."

The company aims to collect bags within five working days and all the customer has to do is to put the bag within four metres of a public highway.

Currently the company is collecting more than 200 bags a month.

For more information about the service and details of the cost, call 0870 880 2430 or visit www.hippowaste.co.uk