garbage VS. trash VS. rubbish

garbage (esp. NAmE)

trash (NAmE)

rubbish (esp. BrE)

I'm sorry, what is NAmE? BrE?

Oh i get it, North American English, and British English;

I know something..

You can say trash talk or rubbish talk... but you can't say garbage talk..or at least it's less common.

Thanks,

In Municipal solid waste terms, garbage refers to rapidly decomposing waste(such as food), while rubbish is slow decomposing, dry waste

In the U.S. people tend to use garbage and trash interchangeably (not rubbish though). As someone said however, garbage is actually supposed to refer to food waste. One interesting way to remember is that in the kitchen we can have "garbage disposals" where you send food down the drain but "trash compactors" for other kinds of waste.

Here is my take on it. Garbage is stuff such as banana peels, coffee grounds and other wet stuff that is to be discarded.
Trash is dry stuff such as paper, plastic, glass, wood and other dry stuff to be discarded. It is my opinion that Rubbish and Refuse are British words that each encompass both trash and garbage. I would love to know what others think as well.

Dave

what about trash?!
is it another term used in MSW?

When I was a kid, my grandparents had a TRASH can (for discarded paper, old stuff, boxes, etc) and a GARBAGE can (for banana peels, coffee grinds, egg shells or anything to do with food). I remember the garbage went out every night but the trash went out when it was full.

Now we have a trash can and a garbage disposal (in which we would only throw food particles down).

Rubbis

I agree with Dave, this was an important and functional distinction before the advent of Glad plastic products in the 1960s. Here in Chicago anyway, most people would segregate the organic wastes, referred to as garbage, from the dry wastes, referred to as trash, for several reasons.

Primarily, you didn't want the trash can in your kitchen to get funky from the garbage because the li