The countertop kitchen composter is a beautiful imaginative and prescient. As a substitute of a smelly bucket of vegetable scraps and low 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. Although a few of these gadgets are marketed as “composters” and have instruction booklets and apps detailing all of the methods through which 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 drastically diminished in quantity and can now not scent, however in the event 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 heart, 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 cut back the amount of meals waste their family produces. Which is in and of itself a respectable purpose, as cast-off meals makes up 24 percent of municipal strong waste, ensuing within the launch of methane, a destructive greenhouse gas, because it breaks down within the landfill.
Or possibly you’d similar 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 corporate astroturfing, there’s nonetheless worth to those gadgets. 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 high decide, the Reencle Prime (read our full review here), even produces one thing shut to compost.
Learn on for our evaluation, and when you’re executed, take a look at a few of our different kitchen-related guides, together with Best Coffee Makers, Best Toaster Ovens, Best Meat Subscription Boxes, and Best Meal Kit Delivery Services.
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.
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As beforehand talked about, none of those machines make actually ready-to-use compost, however the (read our full review here) comes closest to a standard compost bin. Popular in South Korea years earlier than it appeared within the US, the Reencle arrives with a starter bag of ReencleMicrobe (which might 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 giant for a kitchen counter however as a substitute conveniently operates very similar to a heated trash can. The lid might be opened through 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 filth and sawdust.
The scent isn’t always pleasant, however it may well 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 scent when it is being fed its most popular food plan of 1.5 kilos of scraps per day. In contrast to different machines, it may well additionally settle for meat and dairy. For bigger households, there’s the Reencle Gravity ($649), which is a few inches taller and may 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 almost silent, which is a pleasant bonus.
When the amount reaches the fill line, the Reencle grounds might 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 vegetation. I’ve used this resultant combine to constructive impact each indoors and outside.
