in my experience 'garbage' tends to refer to food waste that would smell bad if you didn't attend to it....while 'trash' tends to mean the non-smelly things you throw out--even if they go in the same can/bin. (and some people keep separate containers for them in the house...my mother did). Then when they go out for collection, they all end up in the same BIG container.

But it is a matter of the context in which the word is used. If someone asks "when is the trash collection?", you'd assume they meant garbage & trash together.

And the new category the last number of years is 'recycling', so now we (in a big city) must keep certain plastic, metal, and paper in different bins. And various cities have different rules and procedures.

Life used to be much simpler...