The word trash seems to be in vogue. From managing trash to talking trash to trashing people and ideas, trash is everywhere. Maybe a little more than expected. The etymological roots of the word trash are not exactly clear. A possible origin could be the Middle English word ‘trasch’ or the Old Norse word ‘tross’ which meant rubbish, fallen leaves or twigs. The word made its first appearance in English in the 16th century though its Norse antecedents would give it an earlier ancestry. It’s uncertain parentage has however not caused any variation in its essential meaning.

As a much-used word, trash has gathered visibility over the years, featuring in usages having interpretations which are both literal and figurative. Trash is most easily associated with stuff that gets thrown away because they are waste. It is also used denigratingly to harshly describe people who are worthless. In recent times, the phrase trash talk has gained currency which could mean anything from savage criticism to indulging in harmless nonsense. These variances in usage, whether as a noun,(trash) adjective, (trashy movie) or a verb (trashing the idea), has given trash an easy entry into everyday communication. Words which are easily exchanged with trash like waste and pulp have also gained popular usage. However, until a few decades ago, trash as a standalone word did not warrant much attention.

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Attaching it with words like management and talk has helped in garnishing its meaning. The frequency of usage has also been accelerated by the territorial gains of millennial vocabulary which has been steadily growing over the years. In trying to locate the reasons for trash’s (or its synonyms) increasing presence, a good place to start would be to see how the word has gained traction in the world of industry and government policy. Over the last decade or more, trash management or waste management has become a 1.36 trillion-dollar industry based on the need to address growing environmental and social challenges. Governments and corporations are driving focused initiatives to improve the environment. Continuous improvement of the waste management system to recycle, re-use and transform waste into energy through focused legislation, has resulted in 58 per cent of waste being collected and 18 per cent being recycled.

Electronic waste or e-waste is projected to be the one of the most lucrative waste management segments, enabling resource and process recovery, thereby facilitating environment protection. This increased interest in finding newer ways to make trash management a lucrative commercial proposition, has given trash a peculiar respectability. Besides its recently discovered utilitarian aspects, there are innovative ways in which trash is being used as a form of artistic expression. I was recently impressed by the works of the British artist Nick Gentry who assembles recycled trash like computer discs, giving them a new identity through bold strokes of paint. With old ice scoops being made into lamps and CDs being turned into flexible seats and rejected plastic spoons being turned into stunning sculptures and discarded bulbs shaped into a cloud of bizarre eccentricity, trash is finding interesting ways to enliven our aesthetic sensibilities. Using trash creatively is becoming a statement of identity.

Moving from the material to the behavioural, we discover that trash takes an interesting turn when we link it with communicative habit. Trash talking has become the most pervasive tool in weaponising speech. Sports persons frequently ‘sledge’ their opponents by trash talking in order to get tactical advantage. Trash talking is generously used by politicians to deflate their political adversaries. In fact, a recent post aptly observed how, soon after a newly formed government opened its parliamentary proceedings, members on either side were doing their best to outdo each other in trash talking. In his fascinating book, Trash Talk : The Only Book about Destroying Your Rivals That Isn’t Total Garbage, author Rafi Kohan states that the proclivity for trash talk is implicitly related to the language of competition. He further informs us that while we have recently given it a label, the existence of trash talk spans centuries, across cultures and countries.

Giving an interesting spin on the commonly pejorative view about trash talking, Kohan comes up with an interesting angle. While admitting to the obvious schism which trash talk creates between individual and groups, he opines that it also creates a feeling of bonding and associations. Enumerating further, he diagnoses the psychophysiological causes of trash talk, attributing it to tribal affinity on the one hand, with ostracisation on the other. Kohan goes on to amusingly claim that ‘polite trash talk’ can often be a backhanded way of motivating people, citing examples from sports and politics. From a cultural point of view, the affinity for trash seems to have a long-standing history.

The popularity of pulp (synonym for trash) fiction which started in the late nineteenth century, validates the tendency of a certain section of people to embrace and enjoy whatever is unabashedly lowbrow. Beginning with the publication of the magazine The Golden Argosy in 1882, the proliferation of pulp literature which was dismissed as ‘trashy’ by the literary elite, gathered huge popularity. Fast, cheap and luridly entertaining, this genre continued to attract readership and still maintains its popularity in its current avatar as steampunk literature. Perhaps one of the best examples of transforming ‘trash’ into a cultural statement is Quentin Tarantino’s film ‘Pulp Fiction’. Making his intentions clear, Tarantino shares the two dictionary meanings of pulp ~ a) a soft, moist shapeless mass of matter and b) a magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper in the opening title. Tarantino then decorates his film with trashy kitsch, unsavoury episodes which are physically unpalatable, and lowbrow humour laced with expletives and cheap spirituality.

The result is a creation which are at times repulsive and yet remain addictively attractive. While Tarantino manages to strike a fine balance in the film where trash is creatively manipulated to make a brilliant artistic statement, the same cannot be said of what goes as trash talk these days. As the vicious trolls that litter social media and the campaign speeches by politicians exemplify, trash talk has taken an ugly turn, almost reaching normalisation. Unfortunately, unlike the various initiatives and forums which have been set up to manage material trash, there is no sign of wanting to contain the dangerous malaise of verbal garbage.

(The writer, a former CEO of HCL Care, runs a consulting firm)