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A South Carolina woman nearly recycled something extremely valuable last month when she threw the material into a trash can at a recycling plant in Greenville.
Public works workers spent hours searching through piles of recycled materials to find the ring and safely returned it to her on January 28th.
The woman, Melanie Harper, emailed the city the night before to say she lost the ring at the recycling center on Rutherford Road.
“I know the chances of finding this are slim to none,” she wrote. “However, if your ring is found during the recycling process, we would appreciate it if you could contact us.”
Travis Golden maintains roads for the Department of Public Works, keeping them clear and picking up roadside trash.
He is the one who made the discovery.
“It was a pretty big mountain,” he told USA TODAY Thursday afternoon. “You wouldn’t expect to find a ring in that big old pile…We kind of found two fake rings in the pile before we found the real one.”
Find a lost ring in a pile of recycled items
Jeff Hammond, Greenville’s solid waste supervisor, called supervisors in the morning to make sure the trash cans were kept out of the landfill.
Instead, they instructed workers to dump the trash cans on the ground so they could search for them in the pile. They searched for several hours.
“I got in touch with Melanie who lost her ring and asked her where in the trash she put it,” Hammond said Thursday afternoon. “She said it was either her first or her second window and it was close to the building so she had some idea of the area where the window should be.”
He recalled his supervisor, who limited the search to a specific area.
“Travis moved the material out and it popped,” Hammond said. “It was found probably five minutes after we conducted a limited search to that one area.”
After finding it, he called Harper and Harper couldn’t believe he had actually found it, Hammond said.
Once something is thrown into a landfill, it’s ‘out of our control,’ says public works supervisor.
Hammond said the department also receives calls about other items. Usually, by the time people call for help, the trash cans are empty.
“This material was actually still available, so I was able to search for it,” he said. “Often times, by the time they find out, the material is out of our hands in landfills or recycling facilities.”
Recycled materials are processed at the facility and trash is disposed of in a landfill. Hammond said the department processes about 260 tons of recycled materials each month and 1,500 to 2,000 tons of trash each month.
“That’s a lot of material,” he said. “It’s a bit of luck to find something so small out of that amount of material.”
The search involved Golden, Hammond, James Burnside, Frank Daino, and Manny Crews. The workers will be recognized for their efforts in front of the City Council.
Cruz, the solid waste supervisor, said he couldn’t believe it when Golden made the discovery.
“When that mountain was on the ground, it was a little overwhelming,” Cruz said. “It was great that Melanie called and told me exactly the area.”
Mr Hammond said everyone involved in the search was married so he really understood what a big deal it was.
“If it was one of our wives and it was that special, we would hope someone would do the same for us. That’s why we did something like that. “,” Hammond said.
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