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= Garbage =
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Introduction
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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, nor toxic waste products. Garbage is commonly sorted
and classified into kinds of material suitable for specific kinds of
disposal.
Terminology
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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 the 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
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In urban areas, garbage of all kinds is collected and treated as
municipal solid waste; garbage that is discarded in ways that cause it
to end up in the environment, rather than in facilities designed to
receive garbage, is considered litter. Litter is a form of garbage,
and municipal solid waste that is improperly disposed of, and which
therefore enters the environment, is treated as litter. 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
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Man has been creating garbage throughout history, beginning with bone
fragments left over from using animal parts and stone fragments
discarded from toolmaking. The degree to which groups of early humans
began engaging in agriculture 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
middens, which might contain things such as "a mix of discarded food,
charcoal, shell tools, and broken pottery".
See also
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