Wife placed on town's tip putrid rubbish (7)
I believe the answer is:
twaddle
'rubbish' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'wife placed on town's tip putrid' is the wordplay.
'wife' becomes 'w'.
'placed on' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'tip' says to take the initial letters (I've seen 'tips' mean this (tip can refer to the top end of something)).
'putrid' becomes 'addle' (addle can mean gone off or rotten).
The initial letter of 'towns' is 't'.
'w' after 't' is 'tw'.
'tw'+'addle'='TWADDLE'
(Other definitions for twaddle that I've seen before include "Poppycock" , "Trivial/foolish speech" , "Hot air" , "Senseless talk" , "Drivel" .)