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The main word for ‘rubbish’ or ‘garbage’ in Spanish is la basura. There are synonyms for basura such as suciedad, inmundicia, mugre, cochambre, desechos or bazofia, but they all have their own connotations.
Most of the time people will just use basura, however.
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There’s la bolsa de basura (rubbish bag) el cubo de la basura (the dustbin) and if it’s a big container like the one you find in the street you’d call it el contenedor de basura, which then gets emptied by los basureros (rubbish workers) into el camión de basura (rubbish truck).
If you wanted to say that ‘recycling rubbish is good for the environment’, you’d say reciclar la basura es bueno para el medio ambiente. And many in Spain are now paying rubbish taxes, known as una tasa de basura.
To refer to junk food in Spanish, you say la comida basura.
Then there’s talking about trash TV, which in Spanish is la tele basura or un programa basura.
To speak about a dead-end job in Spain, you call it un trabajo basura, or even un contrato basura (an abusive job contract)
Or in the case of speaking about a spam email, you’d say correo basura.
Basura can also be used to call someone or something disgusting or despicable, for example, soy una basura would be like saying ‘I’m a worthless loser’, or more insultingly eres un basura, you’re a nasty piece of work.