🗑️ Wastebasket emoji

The Wastebasket emoji 🗑️ was approved under Unicode 7.0 in 2014. On most major platforms, the emoji resembles a silver or grey wire-mesh wastebasket. Depending on the platform, the wastebasket may be stylized or depicted realistically. The Apple and Twitter versions of the emoji depict the wastebasket as seen from the side. On all other major platforms, the wastebasket is viewed from an angle that shows the opening at the top.

The Wastebasket emoji 🗑️ is often used to refer to actual trash or junk. It is also very common to use the emoji alongside metaphorical uses of “trash” or “garbage” as in feeling like trash or treating someone like trash. To this end, the emoji is combined with the Fire emoji 🔥 as a pictorial representation of dumpster fire, a slang expression meaning “a situation, person, or thing that is disastrous and out of control.” In 2016, the American Dialect Society voted dumpster fire as its Word of the Year, noting the prominent use of the emoji sequence 🗑🔥 on social media to represent the phrase that year.

On Twitter especially, the Wastebasket emoji 🗑️ is often used to refer to basketball, often alongside the Basketball emoji 🏀. This is likely due to the fact the emoji highly resembles a basketball net when used on the platform as well as as the fact that they share the word basket.