Wasting Away

Whirlpool last week introduced nationally what it plugs as the first major new home appliance since the clothes dryer hit the market 30 years ago. It is a product for the age of ecology: the Trash Masher. The machine will gobble up 60 gal. of garbage, then spit it out in a neatly packaged, nicely deodorized 9-in. by 16-in. by 17-in. bundle.

The Masher, which looks like a kissing cousin to a small filing cabinet, has been under development for three years It is now deemed completely safe. A key--presumably kept out of reach of children and would-be suicides--must be turned, a button pushed and the door closed before it will work. The machine had a successful test run last fall in Houston, Atlanta and New Orleans, few prospective customers seemed upset over the somewhat stiff purchase price of $250.

It requires no special plumbing or wiring and runs on standard household current. Garbage is loaded into a bag in the 17-in.-high waste drawer at the bottom of the 15-in.-wide appliance. Each time the Masher is filled, which in most households would be daily, a spray device automatically squirts a deodorizing and disinfecting liquid on the trash. Then the key is turned on and the start button pushed. Brute force does the job. The waste is compressed--by a ram that for an instant exerts a force of one ton--into a solid, bag-enclosed brick. The bag can be carried out for ordinary garbage pickup and a new paper bag inserted in the machine. Unlike garbage-disposal units installed under sinks, the Masher can crunch up bottles, cans and boxes.

"The principle of the Trash Masher," says Whirlpool, "has been used in auto junkyards* but never before in the kitchen. It could cut a city garbage-disposal budget by one-fourth if widely used." Anticipating such use, Whirlpool has switched production at one of its factories from washers to Mashers, is manufacturing 800 a day.

*Most spectacularly in the James Bond movie Goldfinger, when a Lincoln with a dead gangster in it was reduced to a 4-ft. by 4 1/2-ft. block of scrap metal.

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