"sorting trash" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to the process of organizing garbage in a particular way according to material type or other criteria. For example, "The city put together a team of volunteers to help with the task of sorting trash for recycling."
Sorting trash requires concentration.
Sorting trash from treasure is what I do and I love it.
The task of sorting trash has fallen to a legion of low-paid workers, including a high percentage of immigrants.
In that sense the pivotal figure is Abdul Husain, a prematurely aged 16-year-old, whose gift for sorting trash is the source of his family's income.
We spent a few hours on Thursday afternoon organizing and packing the samples that Kate collected, and sorting trash and other waste that the helicopter will take back to McMurdo.
Jim Lentowski, executive director of the nonprofit Nantucket Conservation Foundation and a year-round resident since 1971, said that sorting trash and delivering it to the local recycling and disposal complex had become a matter of course for most residents.
A software project has humans collaborating with robots to sort trash.
The first was a very small one, run by three men who worked together to sort trash brought to them by others in the community.
Even when not recycled, sorted trash is easier for incinerators to burn cleanly, because the furnace temperature can be adjusted more precisely to minimize the formation of dioxin.
"At least my predictions of chaos have resonated with the administration," said Michael McMahon, a councilman from Staten Island who fought the new rules, arguing that it took years to teach New Yorkers how to sort trash.
His spokesman, Edward Skyler, said that the city would not pick up improperly sorted trash the first week, beginning Monday, but would then resume picking up the mixed metal, glass and plastic no matter how it is disposed of.
