Shanghai sanitation workers search through tonnes of garbage after woman loses her mobile phone

Sanitation workers ploughed through five tonnes of rubbish at a collection depot in Shanghai to help a woman find her lost mobile phone, a news website reported.

The woman from Beijing was in the city for a meeting and lost her mobile in a restaurant near the City God Temple, Thepaper.cn reported.

She and her boyfriend later realised the phone, containing important documents, was gone and used tracking technology to trace it to a rubbish bin outside the restaurant.

But by the time they got there the bin had been emptied and the signal lost as the trash was taken away by truck.

The couple contacted the sanitation department and 16 workers searched through a huge mound of collected trash, the report said.