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Garbage, trash, rubbish, or refuse is
In urban areas, garbage of all kinds is collected and treated as
Garbage, trash, rubbish, or refuse is waste
Waste (or wastes) are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste prod ...
material that is discarded by humans, usually due to a perceived lack of utility. The term generally does not encompass bodily waste products, purely liquid or gaseous wastes, or toxic waste
Toxic waste is any unwanted material in all forms that can cause harm (e.g. by being inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through the skin). Mostly generated by industry, consumer products like televisions, computers, and phones contain toxic chemi ...
products. Garbage is commonly sorted and classified into kinds of material suitable for specific kinds of disposal.
Terminology
The word ''garbage'' originally meant chickengiblets
Giblets is a culinary term for the edible offal of a fowl, typically including the heart, gizzard, liver, and other organs.
A whole bird from a butcher is often packaged with the giblets, sometimes sealed in a bag within the body cavity. The ...
and other entrails
The gastrointestinal tract (GI tract, digestive tract, alimentary canal) is the tract or passageway of the digestive system that leads from the mouth to the anus. The GI tract contains all the major organs of the digestive system, in humans and ...
, as can be seen in the 15th century Boke of Kokery
Boke may refer to:
People
* Ariq Böke, grandson of Genghis Khan and claimant to the Mongol Empire
* Abba Boke, first king of the Kingdom of Gomma in the Gibe region of Ethiopia
* Uncle Boke, the uncle of author Henry Louis Gates, Jr. described i ...
, which has a recipe for ''Garbage''.
What constitutes garbage is highly subjective, with some individuals or societies tending to discard things that others find useful or restorable. The words garbage, refuse, rubbish, trash, and waste are generally treated as interchangeable when used to describe "substances or objects which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard". Some of these terms have historic distinctions that are no longer present. In the 1880s, material to be disposed of was divided into four general categories: ashes (derived from the burning of coal or wood), garbage, rubbish, and street-sweepings.James Ciment, ''Social Issues in America: An Encyclopedia'' (2015), p. 1844-45. This scheme of categorization reduced some of these terms to more specific concepts:
The distinction between terms used to describe wet and dry discarded material "was important in the days when cities slopped garbage to pigs, and needed to have the wet material separated from the dry", but has since dissipated.
Treatment
In urban areas, garbage of all kinds is collected and treated as municipal solid waste
Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, ...
; garbage that is discarded in ways that cause it to end up in the environment, rather than in containers or facilities designed to receive garbage, is considered litter
Litter consists of waste products that have been discarded incorrectly, without consent, at an unsuitable location. Litter can also be used as a verb; to litter means to drop and leave objects, often man-made, such as aluminum cans, paper cups, ...
. Litter is a form of garbage that has been improperly disposed of, and which therefore enters the environment. Notably, however, only a small fraction of garbage that is generated becomes litter, with the vast majority being disposed of in ways intended to secure it from entering the environment.
History
Humans have been creating garbage throughout history, beginning with bone fragments left over from using animal parts and stone fragments discarded from toolmaking.Simon Davis, "By their garbage shall they be known", ''New Scientist
''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publishe ...
'' (November 17, 1983), p. 506-515. The degree to which groups of early humans began engaging in agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
can be estimated by examining the type and quality of animal bones in their garbage. Garbage from prehistoric or pre-civilization humans was often collected into mounds called midden
A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...
s, which might contain things such as "a mix of discarded food, charcoal, shell tools, and broken pottery".
See also
*Garbology
Garbology is the study of modern refuse and trash as well as the use of trash cans, compactors and various types of trash can liners. As an academic discipline it was pioneered at the University of Arizona and long directed by William Rathje. The ...
(study of modern refuse and trash)
* Landfill
A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...
References
{{reflist Waste