An Italian lottery winner narrowly avoided losing a €1 million prize after her winning ticket was accidentally thrown away, triggering a desperate search through a rubbish truck to recover the valuable slip.

The woman, from Italy’s southern Puglia region, had initially taken her lottery ticket to a shop to check whether she had won. However, the retailer’s machine reportedly indicated that the ticket was “non-payable” because shops are only authorized to pay out smaller lottery prizes.

Believing the ticket was worthless, the woman discarded it before returning home. It was only later that a family member informed her that her numbers had come up, making her a millionaire. The woman immediately contacted the shop, only to learn that the rubbish containing her ticket had already been collected.

However, refuse company boss Roberto Nicola Toscano managed to identify the bin lorry that had collected the rubbish and stopped it before the ticket was lost permanently.

Due to the presence of potentially dangerous materials in the waste, the rubbish had to be transferred to a specialist company for a detailed search.

Workers spent more than a day going through the waste, examining various tickets and stubs in an effort to locate the €1 million winning lottery ticket. Their search eventually paid off.

“Amongst them was the stub we were looking for, which was miraculously still in one piece,” Toscano told AFP.

With the recovery operation carried out at the taxpayers’ expense, Toscano said the lottery winner was required to sign a commitment to “cover all of the additional costs”.

The gamble ultimately paid off, as the woman was able to recover her €1 million winning lottery ticket and claim the life-changing lottery prize.