The Trash tool contains records that were deleted from your database.  You can restore these records if you change your mind, or you can empty the trash to clear them out for good.

Most applications will use the trash methods to get rid of data, which causes the removed data to end up in the trash bin.  Some, however, will use the delete methods, which gets rid of data permanently and irrevocably (except from backups).  In the latter case you will not find your data in the Trash.

Normal users will be able to recover or empty trash that they themselves deleted.  Administrators can recover or empty any trash.

Bugs & Issues

It can be tempting to treat the trash as an archive.  Beware, because some systems have automatic garbage collection, and the trash will automatically get emptied at regular intervals.

Some trash operations attempt to find all related data records and include them all together in a single "trashball".  This is convenient because it means that the whole trashball can be recovered in a single click if you change your mind.  However, in some cases the trashball can get so large that it exceeds the database's query size limit.  In that case the trashball will likely be corrupted and will not recover safely.  This typically happens when deleting entire websites with large amounts of data.