In what waste management officials are calling a near-miracle, an anonymous Italian lottery player has reclaimed a €1 million ($1.09 million, £857,158) winning ticket that had been accidentally thrown in the trash — all thanks to the quick work and determined searching of local refuse workers.
The unusual chain of events unfolded in the small southern Italian town of Bitonto, where the regular lottery player purchased his ticket and stopped to check his numbers at the same shop where he bought it. When the point-of-sale terminal displayed a “non-payable” message, the player assumed he had not won anything and tossed the slip into the shop’s trash bin without a second thought.
It was not until the player returned home that the misunderstanding came to light: a relative noticed that the player’s go-to set of lucky numbers — 2, 4, 8, 10, and 51 — had been drawn in the latest draw. Stunned by the mistake, the player and his family rushed back to the shop, only to confirm that the discarded ticket had already been collected by a waste collection truck operated by SANB, the local municipal waste management firm.
Roberto Nicola Toscano, head of SANB, shared details of the frantic recovery operation with local Italian media, explaining that the “non-payable” message that sparked the mistake is a standard terminal notification: it appears when a prize is too large to be paid out directly by a retail location, not when a ticket is worthless.
Toscano said the player immediately reached out to his company to request help retrieving the ticket, and the team acted fast: they located the collection truck before its load of trash was compacted and sent to the regional landfill. As Toscano told Italian broadcaster TGCOM24, timing was critical to the successful recovery. “Luckily it was a Sunday, otherwise the load would have already ended up in landfill,” he said.
The truck was diverted to a dedicated secured search site, where a team of SANB workers began the painstaking process of sifting through thousands of kilograms of mixed waste to find the small paper ticket. After two full days of methodical searching, a waste worker finally spotted the ticket tucked in a torn bag filled with other discarded non-winning tickets on Tuesday morning. Toscano told news agency Ansa that the winning ticket was one of the only intact slips in the bag, despite being buried under a mountain of refuse.
Per a pre-search agreement, the winner will cover all costs associated with the recovery operation, after signing a formal declaration agreeing to cover related expenses before the search began. In a delightful side note, the good fortune even rubbed off on the recovery team: Toscano and his colleagues bought a scratch card as a lighthearted joke mid-search, and ended up winning €50 (£43) themselves. Toscano summed up the entire event simply: “This story is nothing short of miraculous.”