Let's Learn English! Topic: Junk and Garbage! 🗑️🚮🚗 (Lesson Only)

0:00 Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson about junk and garbage.

0:05 I felt kind of bad making this lesson because it

0:08 somewhat reflects on how wasteful we are as a civilization.

0:13 As I was finding pictures,

0:15 I realized that we make a lot of stuff and then we throw a lot of stuff away.

0:19 That's the verb we use quite often when talking about junk and garbage.

0:24 So in this lesson, I'll look at all of the things that, that we don't

0:28 need anymore and the words and phrases we use in English to talk about them.

0:32 So once again, welcome to this English lesson about junk and garbage.

0:38 Junk things that are old, broken, or no longer useful.

0:43 So when you have something, it does something for you.

0:47 A brand new couch is really nice to sit on, but eventually it

0:51 might get a number of tears in it or the legs might break.

0:55 And then we would just say it's junk.

0:58 Maybe you're going to buy a used couch from a friend

1:00 and you go to look at it and you're like, that's just junk.

1:03 I'm not giving you money for this.

1:05 That is junk.

1:06 We use the word junk quite a bit to talk

1:10 in general about things that are no longer useful.

1:14 Hey, did you, what did you do with your old computer?

1:17 Oh, it was junk.

1:18 I just recycled it.

1:20 Hey, can I buy your old car when you're done using it?

1:23 And then I might reply and say, it's junk.

1:25 It just needs to go to the auto records.

1:28 So junk things that are old, broken or no longer useful.

1:34 And you can see there's quite a bit of junk here.

1:36 An old couch, an old table.

1:38 Looks like some foam from an old mattress.

1:41 I would see, that and just think, that's a pile of junk.

1:46 Trash, garbage, garbage truck.

1:49 Let me go back to trash.

1:50 Garbage.

1:50 I thought a different slide was next.

1:52 I was mistaken.

1:53 Trash and garbage are the words we use

1:55 to talk about waste material that is thrown away.

1:59 Now, it can depend on where you live

2:02 and what part of the English speaking country you're in.

2:05 We generally use the word garbage.

2:07 Whereas someone in the state of Michigan

2:10 in the United States might use the word trash.

2:13 They are Mostly interchangeable, but there is a regional difference.

2:18 So we have garbage.

2:20 Brent might have trash.

2:22 I haven't asked Brent from American, English with Brent,

2:25 I'm pretty sure he might use the word trash.

2:27 But waste material that is thrown away.

2:30 And then I would call those garbage bags.

2:33 Someone else might call those trash bags.

2:36 We have what's called a garbage truck,

2:39 a large vehicle used to collect and transport waste from homes or businesses.

2:44 For us, the garbage truck comes on Thursday.

2:49 That's our garbage day.

2:51 But this is a large truck which is usually driven by one person,

2:55 and there's usually another person on the back that gets on and off

2:59 the truck to throw all of the garbage into the truck.

3:03 So garbage truck, a large vehicle used

3:06 to collect and transport waste from homes or businesses.

3:10 And I kind of mentioned it already, garbage day,

3:13 the scheduled day when garbage is collected

3:16 from homes or buildings by a, garbage truck.

3:19 So in my part of the world, garbage day is once a week.

3:24 For us, garbage day is on Thursday.

3:26 On Wednesday night, we get all of our garbage ready so that we

3:31 can put it out by the road in the morning on Thursday,

3:35 and then the garbage truck will come to get it.

3:39 So garbage day, the scheduled day when garbage is

3:43 collected from homes or buildings by a garbage truck.

3:46 Sometimes the day changes.

3:48 If there's a holiday, our garbage day might be on Friday instead of Thursday.

3:53 But yes, garbage day, the day you put your garbage by the road.

3:58 Rubbish.

4:00 So I did need to mention this.

4:01 Waste or unwanted material commonly used in British English.

4:05 I know what rubbish is.

4:07 I don't use the word rubbish very often.

4:11 I don't use the word rubbish bin.

4:13 Used the word garbage can to talk about the thing you put garbage in.

4:17 But apparently if you go across the Atlantic Ocean from Canada to the uk,

4:23 they generally say rubbish and then they put it in the rubbish bin.

4:26 Or I think they just say bin.

4:29 So rubbish.

4:31 I do use this word in a different way, though.

4:34 If someone tells me something that I don't think is true,

4:37 I might say that's rubbish, meaning that I don't believe what they are saying.

4:42 But rubbish, Waste or unwanted material, commonly used in British English,

4:48 waste, a general term for unwanted things that are not needed.

4:53 So when you talk about waste, you might be talking about garbage.

4:57 When Jen cuts flowers, she snips off the end.

5:01 And the bottom part is waste.

5:03 We compost it, of course.

5:05 So anything that isn't wanted can be considered waste.

5:10 And you can even waste time if you want to use it as a verb.

5:14 But yes, a, general term for unwanted things that are not needed.

5:21 Electronic waste or e waste.

5:23 We generally just say e waste now.

5:25 Old electronics that no longer work or are obsolete.

5:30 So in Canada, when you buy something that has, you know,

5:35 wire or cable or, computer chips in it, anything that is electronic,

5:41 you actually pay an extra tax when you buy it and that money

5:46 is used to properly recycle it at the end of its useful Life.

5:51 So when I buy a computer, I actually spend an extra little bit of money like I'm

5:56 required to, so that when I am done using the computer,

6:00 I can bring it to, to the e waste place and they can recycle it properly.

6:05 But electronic waste things, like if you look here,

6:08 I think there's an old radio,

6:10 a, cordless phone, an old mobile phone, cell phone.

6:14 I think there's a car stereo at the far end and some printed circuit boards.

6:20 So there's a lot of e waste, in this pile and it will hopefully all get recycled

6:25 and they can reuse some of the things that are in it.

6:31 Litter.

6:32 So I use this word primarily to talk

6:35 about small pieces of trash left in public places.

6:39 So as I mentioned at the beginning of the lesson,

6:41 when I go for a walk, there's lots of litter on the side of the road.

6:45 People drink their coffee and they throw the cup

6:49 out of the window and really, really annoys me.

6:53 When you go to the park in Canada,

6:55 the are garbage cans everywhere, but people still litter.

6:59 People just throw things on the ground.

7:01 Last year Jen and I went to a baseball

7:04 game and when we were done watching the baseball game,

7:06 there was litter everywhere around the seats.

7:10 So a specific form of garbage litter.

7:13 Small pieces of trash left in public places.

7:17 And then let's look at the difference between scraps.

7:21 Scrap.

7:22 So the same word but used in a different way.

7:25 When I talk about scraps, I mean small leftover pieces of food or material.

7:32 If I was to build something out of wood,

7:34 I would cut the wood and I would use the pieces I need,

7:38 but the rest would be scraps.

7:40 There would just be a pile of scraps on the ground when I'm done.

7:43 When you prepare food, there's usually scraps.

7:46 Orange peels, potato peels, the ends of the tomato,

7:51 And then you might do what we do.

7:53 We feed our scraps to the chickens.

7:56 But scraps, small leftover pieces of food or material and then scrap.

8:02 We often use scrap, the word scrap,

8:05 to talk about discarded material for reprocessing or recycling.

8:12 So this we would call scrap metal quite common in Canada.

8:17 We do not throw away metal, but to take scrap metal to a metal recycling

8:24 facility because they will give you money for it.

8:27 So every few years on the farm, we will put all of our scrap metal,

8:31 into a bin and we will bring it to the scrap

8:35 metal recycler and they will give us money for it.

8:38 So it's very, very nice.

8:39 So scrap is discarded material for reprocessing or for Recycling Junkyard,

8:46 a place where old or broken items or vehicles are stored.

8:51 So in Canada, and I'm not sure what it's

8:55 like in other parts of the English speaking world, when you say junkyard,

8:59 we are generally referring to a place with lots of old cars

9:04 that you can go and buy parts from or that they might eventually recycle.

9:11 So when I say junkyard, it's almost always about vehicles.

9:14 Like, where did you get those used tires?

9:16 Oh, I bought them.

9:16 I went to the junkyard.

9:17 They had some, they had the same car

9:19 there and I bought really, really cheap tires.

9:22 It can mean a place that has other things they might have other,

9:27 like old fridges or stoves or things like that.

9:31 But for me, if someone says junkyard, this is what I picture.

9:35 A place with lots of old vehicles.

9:39 Junk food.

9:40 So a little off topic, but we use the word junk for a lot of different

9:43 things and I'm going to go through some of them.

9:46 Junk food is food that is unhealthy and has little nutritional value,

9:51 but it's usually very yummy.

9:53 So here you have some,

9:55 looks like some little chocolates and some chips and some tortilla chips.

10:00 And at the far end you have some cookies and chocolate and hot dogs.

10:04 Sometimes fast food is also considered junk food.

10:08 So a variety of foods that are not healthy

10:11 have very little nutritional value but are, are quite tasty.

10:16 I think there's some soda or what I call

10:19 pop there as well in the glass in the middle.

10:25 Junk mail.

10:27 Unwanted advertisements sent by mail or post.

10:30 So we still get mail every day, but most of it is junk mail.

10:37 It's usually what we call flyers advertising

10:40 things that are on sale at different stores.

10:43 We rarely ever get a letter.

10:46 Like there's actually a letter on this pile of junk mail.

10:49 And so in Canada, our postal system

10:53 is not profitable and is going bankrupt, basically.

10:58 But they won't stop delivering mail every day.

11:01 I think they should just deliver mail once a week and then they should get

11:06 rid of a lot of the junk mail or charge more money to deliver it.

11:12 So you can see here, I'm not sure what is $79 per month.

11:17 I don't think that's for a vehicle that would be very, very cheap.

11:20 But you have a wide variety of what we would call junk mail.

11:25 When you talk about email, though, it says by email.

11:29 Most of the time I use the word spam.

11:31 Like I get a lot of spam or junk email.

11:34 But, spam is probably the more common term junk drawer.

11:39 I think everyone has One of these in their house.

11:42 And I think I did teach this in another lesson once.

11:45 A drawer used to store random items.

11:48 This looks a lot like my junk drawer.

11:50 My junk drawer has like old screwdrivers and little bolts and old

11:57 key fobs from cars we don't have anymore and a variety of things.

12:01 Let's see if we can get this bigger.

12:03 It might go off the top of the screen.

12:05 Yeah, old screwdriver.

12:06 A bottle opener is in there.

12:09 This reminds me of the book I Spy that we used

12:13 to have with our kids where they would list a bunch

12:15 of words and then show a picture like this and you

12:17 have to find everything in it but a junk drawer.

12:20 A drawer used to store random items.

12:22 I think we actually have two junk drawers if I think about it.

12:27 Junk room.

12:28 We don't have a junk room.

12:29 This is, You gotta have a pretty big house to have a junk room.

12:34 So a room used, Oops.

12:37 A room used to store unwanted or unused items.

12:41 So yes, we do not have a junk room.

12:43 I think when we first got married we sort of had

12:47 a room like this, but we didn't actually own enough stuff to.

12:50 To have a room full of junk.

12:52 But as you can see this room,

12:54 maybe this person doesn't use their sewing machine anym.

12:58 Maybe they just have lots of books that they don't read and old clothes.

13:02 They keep it in their junk room.

13:05 Junk pile.

13:07 A pile of things that are no longer useful.

13:10 So this is not as common now as when I was a kid.

13:16 So when I was a kid, in the late 70s, early 80s,

13:20 a lot of people on their farm would have a junk

13:24 pile where they would just pile things they didn't need.

13:27 We weren't able back then to recycle metal as easily.

13:31 We weren't able to recycle plastic.

13:34 And so many people just threw things on a junk pile.

13:37 Maybe at the back of their yard they would just have a pile of junk.

13:42 So here you can see there's like some

13:44 old barrels and a, plastic lid from a pail.

13:47 And I don't even know what all of this stuff is,

13:51 but it's basically a pile of things that are no longer useful.

13:56 And we would call that a junk pile, space junk,

14:01 or we sometimes say space debris, broken satellites or debris floating in space.

14:07 And this I think is actually becoming a problem

14:10 the more and more we send into space.

14:14 As humans, we are just wasteful people.

14:17 And so eventually wherever there are humans, there will be junk.

14:22 And so the same is true for space.

14:24 So Broken satellites,

14:26 satellites that have been up there and have stopped working, maybe.

14:30 I don't know if satellites get hit

14:32 sometimes by space debris like meteors or comets.

14:35 Not comets, probably not comets.

14:38 But certainly, if you look online,

14:41 I think they've mapped every single piece of space junk.

14:45 You can see where each piece is.

14:47 But yes, broken satellites or debris floating in space.

14:54 Salvageable.

14:55 It's a hard word to say.

14:56 Let me say it again.

14:57 It's hard for me to say salvageable.

15:00 Salvageable.

15:01 Something that can be saved or reused.

15:05 If you were driving along and you saw this old car, you might think to yourself,

15:11 oh, I wonder if that if the owner wants to sell it, I think it is salvageable.

15:17 I think I could buy that car and I could do one of two things.

15:21 I could rebuild it and drive it again,

15:24 or I might be able to sell lots of the parts from the car.

15:28 It's salvageable.

15:30 So that's how I would describe a car like this.

15:33 Because it looks like the kind of car that someone would want to do that with.

15:38 If my old van sitting on our property with all weeds growing around it,

15:45 people wouldn't think it was salvageable.

15:47 But this is kind of a fun old sports car,

15:49 an old muscle car that someone might think is salvageable.

15:53 They might think it can be saved or reused.

15:57 Should I say the word one more time?

15:59 Salvageable.

16:02 To junk or scrap a car.

16:04 So to get rid of a car because it is no longer useful,

16:08 often by selling it to a, junkyard.

16:11 So this is what I talked about earlier.

16:13 My blue van still runs great, but in a year, I might decide to junk it.

16:19 I might describe.

16:20 I might decide to scrap it.

16:21 And that means I will take it to the junkyard,

16:24 or what we sometimes call the auto wreckers.

16:28 It's kind of a weird term, but the auto wreckers,

16:30 I guess they wreck cars, they mush them and sell them to be recycled.

16:36 I would bring it to the auto records

16:37 or junkyard and they would give me money for it.

16:40 The last time I scrapped a car, the last time I junked a car,

16:44 I think I got 480 for my old van.

16:49 I think that's the most I've gotten.

16:50 Canadian dollars.

16:52 So not a huge amount of money, but still very, nice.

16:56 So to junk or scrap a car, to get rid of a car because it is no longer useful,

17:01 often by selling it to a junkyard junker.

17:06 An old or poor quality item.

17:07 Often a vehicle that is barely usable.

17:09 So I do use this to talk about vehicles.

17:13 Sometimes people just like a junker can still be drivable.

17:17 Someone might drive an old junker in the winter

17:20 and keep their really nice car in a garage.

17:23 Because in the winter in Canada, there's lots of salt on the road.

17:28 And so it's important that you, if you have a very, very nice car,

17:33 that you sometimes don't drive it and then it

17:36 doesn't get salt on it and it doesn't rust.

17:38 So junker, an old or poor quality item, often a vehicle that is barely usable.

17:45 Waste management, the process of collecting, handling and disposing of waste.

17:50 So this is the general term for all

17:54 of the people that work the area of recycling,

18:00 composting, picking up trash, picking up garbage.

18:03 It's called waste management.

18:05 If I said to my cousin, what, what do you do for a living?

18:08 What's your job?

18:08 He might say, oh, I work in waste management.

18:11 I drive a garbage truck on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays,

18:15 and I work at the landfill the other days of the week.

18:18 So waste management, the general term for the whole industry, the whole,

18:27 all of the workers and all of the equipment

18:30 that's used to manage garbage and recycling and compost.

18:34 Waste management.

18:36 Dump, a place where waste is left or buried.

18:41 Landfill, a place where garbage is buried under the ground.

18:44 There's probably a slight difference between these two places.

18:49 In Canada, we often refer to it as the dump or the landfill.

18:54 The dump is actually now a place where you can bring anything,

18:59 and there are different places to put it.

19:02 In fact, I did actually do a video at the dump.

19:06 I should find that at some point.

19:08 If you search for Bob, the Canadian.

19:09 Let's learn English at the dump, you'll find it.

19:12 But, when I go to the dump, I can bring an old air conditioner,

19:17 I can bring garbage, I can bring recycling, and there's a place for all of it.

19:23 The landfill though, is the place where the things that can't be recycled go.

19:29 So it's a place where garbage is buried underground.

19:31 We've decided we can't do anything with it.

19:34 We're just going to bury it.

19:36 So that's the difference for me between dump and landfill.

19:42 Recycling center.

19:43 Okay, this is a long definition.

19:45 A place where recyclable materials like paper,

19:48 plastic, glass and metal are collected,

19:50 sorted and processed so they can be made into new products.

19:54 In Canada, we have a pretty extensive recycling program.

20:01 I'm not sure everything gets recycled,

20:02 but you can put, we separate our, recycling into plastic,

20:08 paper, metal, and then there's also compost now,

20:12 which is Food scraps and other organic material.

20:15 But yes, a recycling center is a place where they will sort this.

20:18 A place where recyclable materials like paper,

20:21 plastic, glass and metal are collected,

20:24 sorted and processed so they can be made into new products.

20:29 I think we should do more of this, by the way, composting, facility,

20:33 a place where organic waste,

20:35 like food scraps and yard waste is collected and broken down naturally.

20:40 Nutrient rich compost that can be used to improve soil.

20:44 So we do have compost pickup so we can put things in a compost

20:51 bin and it will get picked up and it will get composted.

20:54 The reason you see all the different long rows is

20:57 that is different stages of the process of things getting composted.

21:03 Garbage can, trash can, rubbish bin,

21:06 container used to hold waste before it is thrown away.

21:10 So again, depending on where you are speaking, English,

21:17 which country you are in, you'll want to find out what the local people say.

21:21 Here we often use garbage can.

21:23 You know, if I have something I don't,

21:25 that I want to throw out, I throw it in the garbage can.

21:27 We might say trash can.

21:29 We don't say rubbish bin in Canada,

21:31 but if you're in the uk, you might say rubbish bin.

21:35 So garbage can, trash can, rubbish bin,

21:40 a container used to hold waste before it is thrown away.

21:44 Recycling bin, a container used for items that can be processed and reused.

21:49 So we often have these in public places

21:51 where you can recycle paper, plastic or cans.

21:55 Sometimes people throw things in the wrong spot, which is a little bit annoying,

21:59 I think, because then someone down the road has to sort everything.

22:03 But yes.

22:04 Recycling bin, a container used for items that can be processed and reused.

22:09 Compost bin, a container used for organic

22:12 waste that can decompose into fertilizer.

22:16 So we often now call it the green bin.

22:19 In Canada.

22:20 The blue bin is for paper and plastics

22:22 and metal and the green bin is for compost.

22:25 So if you have this person looks like they have some eggshells.

22:30 Is that broccoli or lettuce?

22:32 Something like that.

22:33 But definitely food scraps can go in the compost bin.

22:36 And then here in my part of Canada,

22:39 compost gets picked up and it gets composted.

22:43 We, however, feed most of our food scraps to our chickens.

22:47 But there are some things that chickens can't eat.

22:51 Dumpster, a large outdoor container used to collect and store garbage.

22:55 You will see these around buildings and public

22:58 places because they are basically just large garbage cans.

23:02 So again, a dumpster,

23:04 a large outdoor container used to collect and store garbage behind our school.

23:09 There are three dumpsters.

23:10 One is for paper and cardboard.

23:13 One is for actual garbage,

23:14 and I think the other one is for some kind of one of the recycling types.

23:18 But yes, dumpsters.

23:20 And then what's nice is the garbage truck can pick.

23:24 Like, you see the little slots on the side?

23:26 The garbage truck has, like, a forklift on the front,

23:28 and it can lift the whole dumpster up and dump it into the back.

23:32 So dumpster, a large outdoor container used to collect and store garbage.