A pet owner was forced to rifle through 1,000 bags of rubbish when her 90-year-old tortoise hitched a lift in a bin lorry and ended up at the local tip.

Sarah Joiner contacted Westminster Council after releasing Zuma was missing from his home in Central London, believing he had crawled into a rubbish bag.

Using satellite tracking, the council tracked down the refuse lorry to a waste treatment facility operated by Veolia.

Luckily for Zuma the collection vehicle, carrying 10 tonnes of waste, had not yet tipped its waste into the massive storage bunker which processes thousands of tonnes of waste.