Waste workers help find binned €1m lottery ticket in Italy

What the report says

Waste collection workers in Bitonto, in southern Italy, helped recover a €1m lottery ticket that a player had accidentally thrown away, according to BBC World News. The anonymous winner had checked the ticket at a shop and was told it was “non-payable,” then later learned from family that the numbers he regularly played — 2, 4, 8, 10 and 51 — had actually been drawn.

That discovery set off a two-day search involving the local refuse company SANB and a bin lorry that had already collected the discarded slip. SANB director Roberto Nicola Toscano told Italian media that the truck was found before its contents were compacted, avoiding what could have been a permanent loss in landfill. The search was carried out at a special site where workers sifted through a large volume of waste.

BBC World News reported that the ticket was found on Tuesday morning by a waste worker, inside a torn bag with other damaged tickets. Toscano described the recovery as remarkable. The winner is expected to cover the costs of the search, after previously agreeing to pay any expenses linked to the operation. The episode highlights both the risks of misreading lottery results and the practical role local waste teams can play in unusual recoveries.