Is the joke just that there are social distinctions even among these kinds of items? Or is there an aspect that “dustbin” might be more of a British-sounding term and thus carry some cachet for those American cans?
Featured image (at top): “The dust-heaps, Somers Town, in 1836.” From an engraved wood print, circa 1880.
From this UC Santa Cruz site, about Dickens’s last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (whose early drafts reportedly were titled Dust).
Comics I Don't Understand 
The dustbin in the cartoon looks fancier than the garbage cans, but in real life in the UK a traditional dustbin is functionally identical to a garbage can and is (was) where all your rubbish goes, to be collected in the road by people in large trucks. So it’s still a CIDU for me – in the cartoon there is no justification for the difference in look; in fact, our dustbins back in the 60s and 70s looked more like the dark grey garbage cans depicted.
Maybe it is just that “dust” sounds more delicate and fluffy than “garbage”.
Of course, things are different now: where I live we have large wheelie bins only for unrecyclable rubbish (collected every three weeks, and I often miss a collection or two due to lack of need) and four different recycling bins (collected weekly) for food waste, glass, paper and card, hard plastics, cans etc.
Yes, the entire joke is that there is a class system even at the garbage can/dustbin level.
Yes, “dustbin” is distinctly British and seems, in the USA, to have thereby acquired a certain sense of elegance.
It reminds me a bit of the Twix commercials – Undertaker vs Mortician, Ghost vs Apparition, etc.
From my childhood:
“My Old Man’s A Dustman” (as performed by the Irish Rovers).
I thought the “dust” was the ashes from coal-burning heating devices.
Brian, from the article linked down in the image-credit at the bottom, I got the impression that was what it was in many places, and in Dickens’s time. But still, in Our Mutual Friend the plot kicks off with legal disputes over ownership of some dust heaps, because there was quite a bit of wealth to be found in them, somehow.
Later, as our own commenters are saying, in British usage the dustbins are for ordinary household waste.
We used to have a “coal-burning heating device” in our kitchen in the 1960s into the 70s, fuelled by small-form coal called anthracite that was more practical to deal with. The boiler was similar to the bottom one in the linked article, and cooled ashes did indeed go into the dustbin.
https://www.1900s.org.uk/1940s50s-boiler.htm
At that time we only spent the summers in the UK, spending the rest of the year in Lebanon, and so didn’t normally need the boiler for anything other than hot water.
Sometime in the 1970s, as my father neared retirement and we were going to be full-time in Britain, my parents changed the heating to oil-fired, so instead of a pile of anthracite in the back of the coal shed, delivered in sacks by a coalman, we had a large green tank to one side of it, with oil delivered by tanker.
Thank you, very interesting!
The article uses “Anthracite” almost like an invented brand name, but I think it may be the entirely standard term for that form of coal?
Yes, the Wikipedia article says anthracite “has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal and is the highest ranking of coals” and was much used for domestic heating and also running trains and in industry, once they figured out how to light it efficiently… apparently it is less smoky, too.
We used to live in Cheddar in Somerset in the 1960s-80s, a large village / very small town, and up to a few years ago there was a coal merchant there, though it wrapped up in 2010:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04392714
I only live four miles away at the moment.
narmitaj –
Good thing husband does not live there. I have trouble convincing him that we need to separate out our recyclables. He calls it the “garbage that has been washed”. It is good that they make it relatively easy for you.
We (I) put out our recyclables that they collect together – cans, glass bottles, plastic containers if type 1, 2 or 5 on Monday nights for Tuesday pickup. Regular garbage/trash go out on Sunday and Wednesday nights for pickup the next day.
I tend to not have enough recyclables to make it worthwhile to put out that large can mostly empty so I tend to hold it until there is enough – using a cardboard box in our side porch. Newspapers, etc get tied up and left next to that can. I always have some paper/cardboard from food and am never sure if goes with this as it has to be “clean”. I go with if the food item was packaged in something in the box it goes for recycling and if the food was touching the box (and will smell of it and attract bugs/rodents) it goes into the garbage.
Light bulbs and other items have to be recycled at stores which accept them. Our newspaper comes in a thin “film” bag and cannot be recycled with plastic shopping bags at stores. I keep trying to find where to recycle the film bags and best I can find is that any store which recycles is suppose to have a bin for them – they don’t. One day I will be home during the day with nothing else to do and will call, sit on hold, and ask them at the garbage department.
Though he is right – I hate to think how much water I used annually washing the recyclables to put them out.
I have a bin in the house that takes a couple weeks to fill with recyclables. When that happens, I take in, any newspapers, and the cardboard boxes out to the wheelie bin on Sunday to go out to the curb.
The fancy new apartment has a communal trash and recycling deposit area. When I fully transition to that, it’ll just be whenever. The downsizing of the house is taking much longer than planned, which doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Brian – We used to have a small square green plastic box for the recycles – never filled it. Then one year when while we were away for a major holiday they dropped off green plastic cans for recycling.
When the box was destroyed by traffic (we live on a 4 lane main road and they drop it back after emptying into the roadway instead of by or on the curb) I went to get a new one and they only had cans for same.
During Covid I started not putting the recycling out weekly – instead putting it out when the can was full. I know it fills monthly as every time it was full it was the night of our Zoom monthly meeting for our reenactment unit.
And newspapers/papers cannot be put in the box or can – they have to be tied and put next to same.
A few months ago I read that not only type 1 and 2 plastics – per earlier info – should be recycled, but also type 5. So I started putting same also – and we get a lot more 5s than 1s or 2s – hardly any of the latter two. Now I read, again, that only 1 & 2 type plastics should be left!
In the interim I also read that any place which accepts items for recycling will have a bin for the “film” thin plastic bags which the newspapers are delivered in. I have to yet any place which does and I have a growing collection of these bags to get rid of. (On the other hand they are good as a glove to pick up icky things outside and then toss them as garbage.)
@ Meryl (13) – Recycling policies for plastics are highly variable and depend on the local collection system. Some systems only accept particular numbers (odd, even, or whatever), others take everything, and simply incinerate whatever cannot be processed.
Kilby – I understand it varies and not everything can be recycled – but what one reads locally in the regional newspaper (“Newsday”) and what one hears on the local TV news and other programming do not agree with each other.
When I have time to call sanitation department for our township and sit on hold for awhile I will call them and find out what is correct.
Unfortunately we get a lot of #5 recycling but very little #1 or #2 recycling which is the only plastics allowed. Also the daily plastic film bag around my newspaper is not listed for recycling, but I read elsewhere locally that it is.
Plastic bags need to go to special recycling, like at the grocery store.
Brian –
I have read that the plastic film bags are suppose to be accepted where recycling for other substances is done. I have been to several stores which have special recycling bins - such as Home Depot and Lowes - while running errands with husband, but there is never this special bin for the newspaper bags.
Plastic shopping bags (aka tee shirt bags or one time use bags) are not allowed to be given out in NYS except in certain circumstances (such as food service – meaning we get one when buy Chinese food to go and it also has a paper bag in it).
As to paper bags – stores, depending on the county or big city they are located in stores either have to collect a deposit fee on each bag or can if they want, charge for the paper bag.
Since we have lived in this house (over 40 years) I have saved most paper bags and plastic shopping bags we have received if they are not dirty or ripped. Robert (and most of the organizing books I have read for impetus to get/stay organized) always said “Why keep the bags? They are free at the store.” So when this law was passed and he was screaming upset about it I pointed out that it will a long. long time before we have to buy bags – if ever. I now keep half a dozen predoubled paper bags in the back of the car for full food shopping trips and lots and lots of those disposable shopping bags in the car and in our van and a few in our RV van.
There is no recycling program here for these plastic shopping bags.
Forgot to mention – I fold the plastic shopping bags down very small and then and stick them in the back pockets of my jeans – can fit 3 bags in each pocket – so when we go in stores here I always have some bags with me.
Ah, “tee-shirt bags” — learned a new word!
Most guides I have seen have said not to put bags in mixed-stream recycling because it fouls up the machinery and gets mixed in with other products.
Mitch – I have heard them referred to as same.
Brian in STL – I have read in information about recycling for here that any place which accepts recycling – such as Lowes, Home Depot… they have bins outside with the items which should go in the various bins marked – batteries… – is supposed to accept plastic bags including this type. But I have looked and they do not seem to have bins for same. I do find uses for these bags from the newspapers on and off – great long plastic arm and hand covers. Our Chevy Equinox has “the problem” and oil has to be checked at least once a week – on level ground of course, so not on the driveway – and before Covid we would check it weekly at the Walmart in the next county we would go to for some walking around and we would use one of these bags to cover the hand which was touching the oil stick and then the dirty napkin from checking the oil. I don’t want to throw them (unused) in the regular garbage, but they have stacked up over the years.
Our latest recycling “fun” is that the can return machines are rejecting all the empty Coca Cola cans. Husband is Diabetic and if he has a low he will drink a can of Coke. He hates recycling so maybe once a month to once every two months we bring the cans into a store (generally the Walmart Neighborhood Market – supermarket only) and the machines reject the cans and I have to bring them in. They know the cans are being rejected but no one knows why. (This is the Neighborhood Market which has the highest sales of any in their chain – it has been set up with all sorts of electronics to find out why. I can tell them why – Walmarts here in general are small and this is the only supermarket one in at least 2 counties.)