That's a heart :) The Folk now return your kindness with love hearts, which you can collect and use for other things.
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I'd Automate it by sending a bot to the Research Station to bash it until a new object "Toilet" is created. Then another bot will pick up folk that just ate the overcooked mushroom soup and drop that folk onto the Toilet. Any folk who aren't taken to the Toilet in time will need to have their brown gifts collected by a third bot and taken to either the Compost Bin, the Incinerator, or the Toilet.