garbage

Garbage, trash, rubbish, or refuse is waste 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 products. Garbage is commonly sorted and classified into kinds of material suitable for specific kinds of disposal. Terminology The word garbage originally meant chicken giblets and other entrails, as can be seen in the 15th century Boke of Kokery, 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. 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.