Yo mama's so ugly...

No, not that kind of trash talk. We're talking garbage. The stuff 'yo mama' makes you take to the curb. Have you ever wondered what happens to the food, paper and other junk you throw out? It's pretty amazing:

From your cans, your trash makes its way by truck to a transfer station, where it's loaded onto a big trailer with loads of other garbage and taken either to a landfill or an incinerator. A landfill is a big hole in the ground where a layer of garbage is dumped, mashed, and then covered with soil. Incinerators are giant furnaces that some cities use to burn their waste.

If your town recycles, your uneaten food and other non-recyclable items, are collected by your garbage man but your newspapers, bottles and cans are picked up separately. Paper is taken to paper mills where it is reused to make things like copier paper, napkins and greeting cards. Aluminum cans and foil are melted down and used, generally, to make new cans. Glass bottles are ground up and reduced to molten liquid at glass factories, where the liquid is added to molds for new glass containers. And plastic is chopped up and melted down for such varied products as toys, carpets and pillow stuffing.