篓

Top bamboo radical (Kangxi #118 竹 in its compressed 6-stroke top form). Anchors 篓 in the bamboo-basketry family: 篮 (basket), 筐 (square basket), 笼 (cage), 篇 (chapter — bamboo strip). Most Chinese baskets were woven from split bamboo, and the radical states the material upfront. 篓 specifically denotes a tall narrow-mouthed basket — for carrying fish, vegetables, or waste-paper (字纸篓).

Bottom 娄 supplies the sound — lóu shifted to lǒu, only tone differs. 娄 also lends a faint semantic flavour: it originally meant 'hollow, empty, basket-like' (and survives in 娄子 'mess' and the star-mansion name 娄宿). Same phonetic gives 楼 (multi-storey building — basketed-up rooms), 搂 (hug — basket the arms around), 数 (count — bundles), 蝼 (mole cricket).