Sanitation terms can try your sanity.
What if the average family took its cue from Palm Beach County`s Solid Waste Authority? Can`t you just hear Mom saying:
-- ``Whose turn is it to take out the solid waste?``
-- ``Honey, did you rake up the vegetative waste after mowing the lawn?``
-- ``Tommy, don`t commingle the recyclables with the rest of the garbage.``
Linda Hodgkins, a spokesman for the authority, knows the language can be confusing.
``Solid waste is a good term. A lot of people consider that sewage sludge,`` Hodgkins said. It`s actually garbage and trash, with yard waste, appliances and other junk included.
Maybe the tendency toward hard-to-decipher terms started when garbagemen began calling themselves sanitation engineers.
Here`s a look at some of the jargon:
-- Vegetative waste: Yard waste such as grass clippings, tree trimmings and leaves.
-- RDF: Stands for refuse-derived fuel, although authority officials like to refer to it just by its initials. It`s actually shredded garbage and trash. The shredded material is at the county`s garbage incineration plant, waiting to be burned to produce steam that produces electricity.
-- Resource Recovery Facility: This is what the authority calls its garbage incineration plant.
-- MRF: When solid waste officials talk of ``The Murf,`` they mean the MRF, which stands for Materials Recovery Facility. In English, that`s where glass bottles, aluminum cans, newspapers and plastic jugs are sorted for recyling.
-- Commingle: To mix two kinds of waste.
-- Volume-based system: Currently being considered, the system charges people based on how much garbage they produce.
Garbage/trash -- Just in case you don`t know the difference, garbage is putrescible waste, which means it can become rotten or smelly. Household trash is non-putrescible: It doesn`t become smelly, but you just don`t want it around your house.
WHERE IT ALL GOES: