THE STORY of the ugly duckling has a lot in common with Dorset's household recycling centres.For some the weekly trip to the tip is a gut-wrenching, nose-clamping ordeal.

But out of the mountains of broken glass, television sets, sofas, rubble and garden rubbish something beautiful is emerging.

Roses in gardens across the county are in bloom thanks to the tonnes of rotted leaves, grass cuttings and shrubs collected at Christchurch's Wilverley Road Recycling Centre each day and then composted.

Incredibly, the two-acre site, in Somerford, is also the source of a whole range of warm fleece jackets sold in outdoor pursuit shops and made out of fibres spun from recycled plastic bottles.

Textiles, including shoes, clothes and curtains, are cleaned and either donated to charities were they are sent to Third World countries or, if they are beyond repair, turned into wipe rags.

In fact almost 70 per cent of the 19,000 tonnes of waste dumped at the site each year is recycled and turned into something useful.

David Blackburn from Dorset County Council's waste division said: "We want to maximise the recovery of waste to divert as much away as possible from landfill sites, where a potentially valuable resource would be lost for ever.

"Dorset has the highest rate of recycling in the UK and we should be justifiably proud of that record.

"It is expensive to transport waste to the landfill and by recycling our waste we can even help minimise our council tax bills. Our philosophy is if it can be used, it should be used."

The Wilverley Road recycling centre was built 12 years ago and is one of 11 similar sites across Dorset which are run by a private company contracted by the county council.

It has 26 steel skips, some capable of holding up to four tonnes of compacted rubbish, positioned on a circular island inside the site, which is divided into clearly marked zones, including metal, wood and textiles.

Mr Blackburn explained that the site is busiest at weekends when up to 12 tonnes of wood is recycled each day, and added that the tip, which had 357,335 visitors last year, only shuts on Christmas Day.

He praised the public for helping make the centre such a success, but hit out at a tiny minority who refuse to separate their bags of rubbish, which leaves staff at the site with the grim task of climbing into the enormous skips to sort out the waste.

But site manager Chris Jacobs revealed that his staff have often discovered buried treasure hidden deep inside the heaps of waste, including gold wedding rings and several sets of car keys.

A lot of reusable bric-a-brac is resold at a stand at the end of the site, which Mr Jacobs said has proved a popular attraction with visitors.

"We want people to be able to come in here and dispose of their rubbish as quickly as possible.

"We work hard to provide a clean and tidy environment which visitors find easy to use and where they can speak to our staff if they have any problems."

Just days ago Dorset County Council expressed its concerns as Poole and Bournemouth councils announced plans to bar non-residents from using their tips, amid stringent new rules aimed to increase recycling.

But Mr Blackburn said there are no immediate plans to introduce a similar closed borders regime at the Christchurch site, where 50 per cent of users are from outside of town, some from as far away as Hampshire.