For further reading:

"In order to explain current default Erlang’s GC mechanism concisely we can say; it is a Generational Copying garbage collection that runs inside each Erlang process private heap independently, and also a Reference Counting garbage collection occurs for global shared heap.

The GC for private heap is generational. Generational GC divides the heap into two segments: young and old generations.

The GC for shared heap is reference counting. Each object in shared heap (Refc) has a counter of references to it held by other objects (ProcBin) which are stored inside private heap of Erlang processes."

https://hamidreza-s.github.io/erlang%20garbage%20collection%20memory%20layout%20soft%20realtime/2015/08/24/erlang-garbage-collection-details-and-why-it-matters.html