A woman in the Apulia region of Italy accidentally threw a lottery ticket worth €1m into the waste, but municipal workers managed to rescue it before it was deposited in the landfill. The incident attracted significant attention after SANB, the waste management company, published a report on the unusual intervention, with the news further reported by AFP.
The incident began on Sunday when the winner went to a local shop to check her ticket. A message appeared on the machine indicating that the prize could not be paid out at that location, as smaller shops could only pay out small amounts. Thinking she had won nothing, the woman left the ticket in the shop and went home.
Upon arriving home, a family member told her that the numbers she regularly played had been drawn. Realising her mistake, she returned to the shop, but it was too late as the ticket had already been thrown in the bin, which had been collected. The workers were then asked to help locate the lost ticket.
Roberto Nicola Toscano, director of the SANB company operating in Apulia, confirmed that the truck collecting waste from that area had been located. For safety reasons, the vehicle was taken to a company authorised to inspect waste, where workers spent hours searching through the contents.
Fortunately, the ticket remained intact despite having been in the waste collection truck. The workers managed to extract it from the pile of rubbish before the truck reached the final landfill. This case illustrates how a quick response by waste management services can save valuable items that would otherwise be lost forever.
