The countertop kitchen composter is a stunning imaginative and prescient. As an alternative of a smelly bucket of vegetable scraps and occasional grounds breeding fruit flies in your counter or attracting rats to your yard, you could possibly simply put all of it right into a nifty electrical gadget, and at some undetermined level sooner or later you will have a bountiful provide of nutrient-rich compost to make use of in your backyard.
Sadly, not one of the extra fashionable electrical machines in the marketplace do that. Despite the fact that a few of these units are marketed as “composters” and have instruction booklets and apps detailing all of the methods wherein one can use compost, the overwhelming majority of kitchen composters are simply going to grind up and dry your meals scraps. Your waste output will probably be vastly lowered in quantity and can now not odor, however should you’re hoping to place eggshells and banana peels right into a machine and magically scoop out the type of true compost you’d purchase on the backyard middle, that’s simply not going to occur.
That mentioned, you can combine small quantities of those grounds into potting soil in very small ratios, or use them as feeder for a “actual” compost pile, however most of those machines are meant for these wanting to scale back the quantity of meals waste their family produces. Which is in and of itself a official aim, as cast-off meals makes up 24 p.c of municipal stable waste, ensuing within the launch of methane, a harmful greenhouse fuel, because it breaks down within the landfill.
Or possibly you’d identical to your meals grounds to be odor-free and shelf-stable earlier than including them to your inexperienced waste bin for municipal composting or your yard compost. In any case, regardless of critics’ cries of greenwashing and company astroturfing, there’s nonetheless worth to those units. They make folks extra conscious of their meals waste. They do not use as a lot energy as you assume they’d (round 1 kilowatt-hour was typical). And our prime decide, the Reencle Prime (learn our full overview right here), even produces one thing shut to compost.
Learn on for our evaluation, and when you’re achieved, take a look at a few of our different kitchen-related guides, together with Greatest Espresso Makers, Greatest Toaster Ovens, Greatest Meat Subscription Bins, and Greatest Meal Package Supply Companies.
Up to date October 2025: We have added Lomi’s latest mannequin and eliminated a discontinued composter, rearranged the structure of this text, and ensured up-to-date hyperlinks and costs.
Desk of Contents
Greatest General
As beforehand talked about, none of those machines make actually ready-to-use compost, however the (learn our full overview right here) comes closest to a standard compost bin. Standard in South Korea years earlier than it appeared within the US, the Reencle arrives with a starter bag of ReencleMicrobe (which will be bought individually for $65) containing activated carbon, wooden pellets, glucose, and a trio of patented microbes able to chow down. There’s additionally a prefilled carbon filter that slots into the again.
{Photograph}: Kat Merck
At 14 x 15 x 22 inches, the Prime is simply too massive for a kitchen counter however as an alternative conveniently operates very like a heated trash can. The lid will be opened by way of sensor on the backside or a button on the management panel, and in goes your natural matter. That is it. There are not any cycles, tablets, or auxiliary buckets to fret about. Even the app is completely non-obligatory. Inside hours to days, relying on the merchandise, the scraps are damaged down into a cloth resembling a cross between dust and sawdust.
The odor is not at all times nice, however it could actually normally be mitigated by the management panel’s Dry and Purify buttons or by including what in composting lexicon known as “browns”—dry, carbon-rich supplies like bread or shredded paper.
{Photograph}: Kat Merck
The Reencle additionally tends to not odor when it is being fed its most popular weight-reduction plan of 1.5 kilos of scraps per day. Not like different machines, it could actually additionally settle for meat and dairy. For bigger households, there’s the Reencle Gravity ($649), which is a few inches taller and might settle for 3.3 kilos of waste a day. I additionally examined this and located it to be considerably quieter than the Prime—not that the Prime is noticeably loud, solely about 30 or so decibels, however the Gravity is sort of silent, which is a pleasant bonus.
When the quantity reaches the fill line, the Reencle grounds will be scooped out and added at a 1:4 ratio with potting soil, then left to treatment for 3 weeks (I used a big tub in my storage), after which it may be used for each out of doors and indoor crops. I’ve used this resultant combine to constructive impact each indoors and open air.
