Meaning of rubbish, litter, trash, waste, garbage

Hi,

Are these words the same meaning or are they different from one another.

  1. rubbish
  2. litter
  3. trash
  4. waste
  5. garbage

Thanks.

Hi,

You asked:

I would say that rubbish,trash and garbage all mean roughly the same giving the idea of something thrown away and not needed.

Litter tends to refer to things dropped in the street like cigarette packets,sweet papers, crisp packets and so on.

Waste is a more general word referring to any type of material that is not used or used unwisely. It can be used like this: waste of time, energy waste, waste disposal site, waste material.

Alan