A woman in China has managed to retrieve her £13,000 engagement ring after accidentally throwing it away with rubbish.
Local sanitation workers searched through some 13 tonnes of garbage before finding the diamond ring at a recycling centre on Tuesday in Yangzhou, eastern China.
The woman, Ms Xia, was ecstatic when workers gave the ring back to her. She said she was ‘so grateful’ to them.
Trash to treasure: Ms Xia, from China, recovered her diamond ring from 13 tonnes of rubbish
According to Yangzhou Evening News, the lost ring was given to Ms Xia by her husband when the two got engaged. It’s said to be worth 120,000 yuan (£13,600)
The woman is said to cherish the diamond ‘very much’. She takes it off her hand every night before going to bed, and puts it on again in the morning.
The report said that around noon on December 18 when Ms Xia’s was slinging a bag of rubbish into a public bin, the ring slipped off her finger.
Apparently, the woman only realised the ring had gone missing around three hours later and she immediately went back to the bin to look for it. She failed to find it.
She contacted the local sanitation station at around 4pm. The supervisor of the station found out that the rubbish of the day had already been collected and sent to a recycling centre.
The woman said she had thrown away the engagement ring by accident while slinging garbage
The supervisor requested the recycling centre to be sealed until the next morning.
On December 19 at around 6am, eight sanitation workers started looking for the diamond ring for Ms Xia through the rubbish, which was said to weigh around 13 tonnes, according to Pear Video.
A worker, named Yang Zhenglong, managed to track down the shiny object at around 8am.
After getting back her ring, Ms Xia told Yangzhou Evening News: ‘When they said they found it, I couldn’t believe it at first, but then I realised it was indeed the ring.
‘(I am) so grateful to them.
‘Although the ring is only worth over 100,000 yuan (£11,300), the dedication of the sanitation workers is more valuable.’