Garbage compactor

"Will you shut up and listen to me? Shut down all garbage mashers on the detention level, will you? Do you copy?"

- Luke Skywalker, to C-3PO

A Garbage Compactor, trash compactor, or Garbage masher was a metal chamber used to store and compress waste. The walls would come together, compressing and crushing the garbage in the process. The doors to the compactors were usually magnetically sealed, preventing people from firing at it with a blaster. When Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca went to rescue Leia Organa aboard the first Death Star, they were forced to blast their way into unit 3263827. Once inside, they were attacked by a Dianoga that almost killed Skywalker when it took him underwater. When the creature released Skywalker, the walls began to rumble and edge toward each other, threatening to crush the companions trapped inside the masher. However, they were saved when C-3PO, Skywalker's protocol droid, managed to have all the garbage mashers on the detention level shut down.

34 years later during the Battle of Starkiller Base, Solo asked Finn, a former First Order stormtrooper who had sanitation duties at the base, if the location happened to have trash compactors. Finn used his knowledge to find one and they forced their prisoner, Captain Phasma, down the garbage chute.

Appearances

 * A New Dawn
 * Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope
 * A New Hope Read-Along Storybook and CD
 * Star Wars: Darth Vader 12: Shadows and Secrets, Part VI
 * All Creatures Great and Small
 * Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens
 * Star Wars: The Force Awakens junior novelization

Non-canon appearances

 * Epic Yarns: A New Hope