Rubbish collectors have helped a woman in Italy retrieve her winning €1m (NZ$2 million) lottery ticket after it was mistakenly thrown in the trash.
The woman checked the ticket at her local store in southern Puglia on Sunday where the machine indicated it was "non-payable". But that was only due to the size of the jackpot, she would later learn.
The woman discarded the ticket and returned home – and discovered she had won the big prize.
"The winner always played the same numbers as they were associated with a loved one,” Roberto Nicola Toscano, the administrator of waste management company SANB, said.
After rushing back to the store, the woman learned the rubbish had been taken away.
The lottery winner then called Toscano, who helped trace the ticket's path.
"We reconstructed the journey of the ticket, without much hope of finding it, as it had already been picked up by a garbage truck," Toscano said.
After identifying the truck containing the winning ticket, a specialist company was tasked with finding the discarded item.
After a day of searching, the ticket was found, Toscano said – and "miraculously still in one piece".
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