ROY Allen is a keen fan of recycling but when he accidentally threw out his wallet and mobile phone with some old newspapers it was a step too far.

Luckily staff at Hills Waste were able to help him sift through piles of paper at their depot when he called them for help.

In his wallet, Mr Allen also had a receipt for a treasured clock he had taken to the menders which he was desperate to retrieve.

Mr Allen, of Badbury Park, Swindon, said: “I was taking my wife out to Marshfield and I thought: ‘Since I’m there I’ll do some shopping at Morrisons.”

“The first thing I did was to put my wallet glasses and mobile phone into a little plastic bag.”

He explained he wasn’t wearing a jacket and didn’t like having bulky things in his pockets and the bag allowed him to carry them easily.

Because he and his wife Barbara were giving a lift to another two ladies he threw the bag into the boot, not realising that they landed in a bag of newspapers destined for the recycling bank.

As he arrived at the store in Chippenham he remembered the newspapers and took them over to the containers.

It was only as he was shaking and pushing the bag of papers through the small gap that he spotted the little bag containing his valuables going through with them.

He tried to grab it but the gap was too small.

Determined to retrieve his things, Mr Allen contacted the Hills Waste recycling depot in Calne where staff told him the container would probably be collected on the Tuesday after the bank holiday and taken to the depot at Compton Bassett for processing.

That Monday he had a call from Stuart Gill, a supervisor at Hills saying that if he wanted to go to the facility early the following morning they could start looking for it.

Arriving bright and early at 7.30am, he was issued with protective gloves, a hard hat and an apron for the mucky task of sorting through the newspaper that had been emptied into a separate area.

“We started shovelling through this paper and after about 45 minutes Stuart said: ‘Is this yours? It was all their, still intact. Inside my wallet I had my driving licence and a receipt for a grandmother clock which I had put in for repair. That was my big worry.

When he lost the wallet he had alerted his bank which had blocked his card, but the £80 cash was still safely tucked inside.

“I was so relieved I offered them some money and said: ‘Have a drink on me.’” To his disappointment they said they couldn’t accept.

Instead they regaled him with stories of different things they had recovered for people from the recycling banks, including the passport accidentally posted through the hole by a girl about to go on holiday and the woman who lost £1000 in notes and managed to find it all.

As Stuart said: “We arranged for the paper recycling container to be tipped in a separate bay at our materials recycling facility and invited Mr Allen to join us in the search for his lost items.

“After about 45 minutes I came across a tied up sandwich bag with Roy’s wallet, phone and glasses case in. He promised to be more careful when recycling in the future.”