An Italian lottery player who accidentally threw away a winning ticket worth one million euros has had their day made by a refuse company who spent two days digging through rubbish to find the missing slip.
The anonymous player threw away the ticket in the southern Italian town of Bitonto after seeing it was “non-payable” – which they thought meant their numbers had not come up.
The term actually meant the shop where the ticket was purchased could not pay out such a large prize.
The winner only realised their mistake when a family member pointed out their chosen numbers of, 2, 4, 8, 19 and 51 had been drawn.
They then immediately contacted the shop, only to find the waste had already been collected.
They then contacted the local refuse company SANB to see if they could help, and the company agreed to look for the missing ticket.
Director Nicola Roberto Toscano said on Facebook that as soon as they were contacted, they agreed to stop the lorry carrying the rubbish and to try and find the ticket.
Workers spent two days at a special facility digging through the rubbish and found numerous damaged and unrecoverable tickets before they eventually found the winning slip.
Toscano said: “It is often said that waste can be a resource. Here… there are those who have decided to take this expression really too literally.”
Toscano told local Italian media it was lucky the incident happened on a Sunday otherwise it would have been taken straight to landfill.
He also said the winner had promised to cover the costs of the recovery.
After the team had handed over the winning ticket to its owner, Toscano said they went and bought a scratch card and won fifty euros.
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