How to Use wastepaper in a Sentence

wastepaper

noun
  • Mill’s maid thought the manuscript was wastepaper and threw it into the fire.
    John D. Hagen, National Review, 20 Aug. 2020
  • Or perhaps the checks were simply Dickie’s mistakes, screwed up and thrown in the wastepaper basket.
    Tessa Hadley, The New Yorker, 26 July 2021
  • Batman and Spiderman action figure toys lie in a wastepaper basket next to the boy.
    Fox News, 8 May 2020
  • The black-and-white picture depicts a young boy sitting on the floor playing with a nurse superhero toy, as Batman and Spiderman toy figures lie in a wastepaper basket next to him.
    BostonGlobe.com, 23 Mar. 2021
  • Not to mention the widespread habit of tossing used toilet paper into wastepaper baskets to spare the strain on many homes’ aged and insufficient plumbing.
    Washington Post, 1 Jan. 2020
  • Before presenting the first award of the night, the duo performed an elaborate bit about sanitizing the envelope with the winner’s name in it, which included setting fire to it in a wastepaper basket to burn off the germs.
    Danielle Turchiano, chicagotribune.com, 20 Sep. 2020
  • With no market for the wastepaper and plastic in their blue bins, some communities scaled back or suspended curbside recycling programs.
    Mary Esch, The Seattle Times, 19 May 2019
  • Instead of returning to China empty, shipping containers were filled with refuse, bales of plastic bottles, cardboard and wastepaper.
    Emily Chasan, Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct. 2019
  • What in creation was spilling over several folding tables—used ball-point pens, foil, torn newspaper, doodles, bits of paper, the contents of a wastepaper basket held together with cardboard and brown packing tape.
    Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 20 June 2018
  • In one of several bits acknowledging coronavirus safety protocols, a rubber glove-wearing Kimmel laboriously sprayed Lysol on an envelope containing a winner’s name, then set it on fire in a wastepaper basket, presumably to burn off any germs.
    oregonlive, 20 Sep. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wastepaper.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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