I am struggling at times with vastly too much of a specific type, such as coal in storage, during free play and missions. Is there a trash function or disposal method built in without mods that can be leveraged?
03 Answers
While you can not delete items directly, you can place them inside a container and destroy this container by using your weapon (press 'c' to hit highlighted target) or ramming it with a vehicle.
For your personal inventory, you can use logistics robot trash slots to have your logistics buddies take your excess inventory to a storage chest, but for total items in the world, there is no trash feature.
Your best bet is to plan ahead and use your circuit/logistics networks to shut off production of a given item when you have enough of it, and resume production once stocks deplete.
If your issue is too much of a given item on a specific belt loop, it helps to make sure you never have more than one kind of item per each side of a given belt. Between braiding underground belts, and using long inserters to grab from a belt an extra space away, you can manage to fit a decent variety of items through a 2 belt wide area while still keeping them organized.
For other ideas on how to control your supply flow, this Reddit thread helps
And of course, check the wiki too
Here's an example of underground belt braiding
Lastly, you can place all your unwanted items in a chest, and destroy the chest with weapons, but that would be wasteful. Don't do that!
2there is now a mod (in the interest of full disclosure I wrote it)
