Objective-C uses reference counting for its memory management, but the associated Lisp objects are managed by the Lisp garbage collector. When an Objective-C object is allocated, the associated Lisp object is recorded in the runtime system and cannot be removed by the garbage collector. When its reference count becomes zero, the object is removed from the runtime system and the generic function objc-object-destroyed is called with the object to allow cleanup methods to be implemented. After this point, the object can be removed by the garbage collector as normal.