Small particles of foreign matter have historically created problems at the textile mill. They are very difficult to remove without considerable fiber damage and weight loss. Cotton standards approved in 1986 for classing cotton worldwide contain large trash and small trash, depending on the reference grade. As a result of the perceived need to reduce the amount of small trash in the reference sample, seed cotton was collected from Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas and ginned at Stoneville, MS, on a common ginning system. A variable number of saw-type lint cleaners were used to achieve different amounts and types of trash in the ginned and cleaned samples. Dust (less than 500 microns) and trash (larger than 500 microns) particles in the cleaned lint were reduced dramatically by lint cleaning. The trash-related characteristics of the samples are reported. The samples were used as references during establishing proposed cotton standards for possible consideration at the next Universal Standards Conference.