In the Russian version of the game, this device is described as "Измельчитель. Разрушает предметы, помещенные внутри. Автоматически уничтожает контент при заполнении инвентаря". Description from the English wiki: "Store items in this machine and press the red button to destroy them immediately. The maximum number of items that can be destroyed at one time is 30". Unnecessary things can simply be thrown away. Why waste resources, energy and space for a special machine? And what do the two checkboxes at the bottom of the device management screen mean? In this case, only one can be checked - this contradicts the rules of interfaces. For this functionality, whatever it was, it was necessary to use either a radio-button or a toggle switch.

Basically its the trash for unwanted items. If you got a bunch of larva, fish eggs, frog eggs that you collected while looking for a specific specimen this machine will delete them. Finding a place to store them takes up more space. Throwing them on the ground makes the world look messy and means that the game still has to draw them when you pass by.

The check boxes are an odd way to display an on/off switch to let the machine automatically empty itself when full.

It's a device to discard unwanted items, which can be used for instance to prevent extractors from clogging up.

For example, a gas extractor produces methane, nitrogen and oxygen. If you set the extractor as a source for these materials and a couple lockers as targets, the extractor will start filling up with one of the materials as soon as the locker for that material is full, which in turn blocks production of all other materials. But if you set the priority on the lockers to 1, and set the shredder as a target for the same materials with priority 0 and automatic disposal enabled, your drones will offload excess material to the shredder, where it's automatically discarded. That way your extractor will keep producing materials, and if you take something from storage, it's automatically replenished (because the extractor can never fill up and materials go to storage first before the go to the shredder).