Turning your food scraps into rich soil is a great way to go green. Still, there are challenges associated with composting that deter some people from taking the plunge.
Traditional composting takes a long time and certainly doesn’t smell the best. Keep reading to learn how the best compost machines make this process a breeze.
Our Top Picks for the Best Compost Machine
Best Overall:
Airthereal Revive Electric Kitchen Composter
Great for Kitchens:
Vitamix FoodCycler
For Rapid Composting:
Lomi Kitchen Composter
Large Capacity Kitchen Composter:
Homaz life Electric Kitchen Composter
Best Overall
Airthereal Revive Electric Kitchen Composter
The Airthereal Revive is the compost machine to have in your kitchen! It reduces food waste by 90% and produces a dry, powdery compost that you can use in your garden, use for your houseplants, or dispose of in your household garbage (knowing it’s much less food waste than it would have been!).
This sturdy electric composter has a 2.5 liter capacity cast aluminum bucket that’s easy to clean and even dishwasher safe. It handles common food wastes like fruit and veggies, dairy, eggshells, meat scraps, soft bones, grains, nuts (no shells), and coffee grounds.
The food waste can be processed after just four hours of drying, so each day’s scraps can be garden-ready compost by the next morning if you run the Airthereal overnight. The carbon filter that eliminates orders between run cycles is also biodegradable.
There can be a smell during the run cycle, but it’s not unpleasant. Adding lots of wet scraps can cause the finished product to be clumpy, but allowing scraps to dry out before adding them to the bucket seems to be an easy remedy.
This is a great kitchen compost machine for daily use for families or less frequently for smaller households.
Pros:
- Reduces food waste by 90%
- End product is dry
- Quick processing
- Sturdy, easy-to-use product
Cons:
- Won’t process shells, hard bones
- High moisture content causes clumpy results
Best for Kitchen Use
Vitamix FoodCycler
The Vitamix FoodCycler is the best compost machine for daily indoor use. This tabletop device is compact, quiet, and powerful enough to handle all of your kitchen scraps.
Vitamix is a trusted name in household appliances. It is no surprise that this company basically pioneered overnight composters for residential use.
The FoodCycler uses consistent heat to remove moisture from refuse. After everything is dry, the powerful blade makes quick work of pulverizing everything into a coarse powder.
This composter can easily break down materials such as cheese, meat, and even bones. The advanced carbon filtration system guarantees you can operate it anywhere without worrying about strong odors.
The quick compost cycle finishes after four to eight hours. The final product is a dry, nutritional pre-compost that you can continue processing without attracting pests.
What is the best way to finish Vitamix FoodCycler pre-compost? This substance is excellent for adding to your vermicomposting bin. This way, worms, soldier flies, and other helpful bugs can break it down into garden-ready casings.
The FoodCycler is the best compost machine for people who lack space but want to reduce their food waste. You can operate this appliance right on the counter without stinky smells or pesky pests in your apartment.
Pros:
- The carbon filtration system eliminates odors for pleasant indoor use
- The powerful Vitamix blade can process most waste, including animal bones, without any hassle
- The operation is quiet, so you can run it overnight with no issues
Cons:
- It produces pre-compost instead of compost
- The vessel is somewhat small, only holding half a gallon of scraps
Best Rapid Composter
Lomi Kitchen Composter by Pela Earth
The Lomi Kitchen Composter is one of the most popular options for indoor composting. This is another rapid kitchen compost machine that you can use anytime and anywhere.
Pela Earth has spent years perfecting the Lomi design. The talented engineers utilize customer feedback and the latest research to deliver a premium indoor composting device.
The Lomi offers some unique features that set it apart from other rapid composters. This appliance has a slow mode that enables you to get the most out of your kitchen scraps.
Lomi’s slow mode uses a lower heat setting so you can preserve the many beneficial bacteria and fungi that make compost successful. This setting creates a living pre-compost after about 24 hours of continuous operation.
The Quick and Dirty setting functions similarly to other popular rapid compost machines. When you set this mode, you can expect a dry, loamy pre-compost in just eight hours.
Do you want another reason to try the Lomi? This machine is designed and manufactured in Canada by a company adhering to the highest standards in climate sustainability and carbon neutrality.
Pela Earth’s Lomi Kitchen Composter is the best compost machine for urban gardeners who need options. The device is silent and odor-free, so it won’t be a nuisance when you need to run it for long hours.
Pros:
- Lomipod advanced filtration system offers fully odorless operation
- Multiple settings allow you to choose what kind of pre-compost you want to work with
- The machine uses less electricity than competing devices, saving you money and emissions
Cons:
- It produces pre-compost instead of compost
- The composter, filter cartridges, and charcoal tablets can be expensive
Large Capacity Machine
Homaz life Electric Kitchen Composter
Indoor composting is a rapidly growing technology, with many new machines emerging on the market. The Homaz life Electric Kitchen Composter is a recent addition to the kitchen composter market that shows promise.
This rapid composter works similarly to other tabletop options with double the capacity. The vessel can process over a gallon of kitchen scraps at one time.
Each full cycle takes between four and eight hours to break down food scraps. This appliance runs quietly and the air-filtration system keeps odors to a minimum.
Homaz life has not incorporated a slower composting option in this simple compost machine. The single-speed setting fully dehydrates the contents, so this device is only capable of making sterile pre-compost.
This is an energy-efficient appliance that uses only around 0.5kWh per cycle. It can help you reduce your household’s methane emissions and garbage while providing you with a great starter for other composting methods.
This device is the best composting machine for large households or commercial kitchens that need a quick way to break down a lot of scraps. It is still in its early phases, so stay on the lookout for advancements in the near future.
Pros:
- The large-capacity reservoir can process over one gallon of refuse in a cycle
- The quiet and odorless design is ideal for indoor use
- You can set it and forget it overnight for rapid automatic composting
Cons:
- It produces pre-compost instead of compost
- The device is new on the market, so parts and support might be limited
The Best Compost Machine Shopping Guide
How do you select the best compost machine for your home? There are many factors to consider, so you should ask yourself some important questions to determine the right fit.
How much food waste does your household produce daily? Do you plan to operate your new compost machine indoors or outdoors? How will you use the compost once it is finished?
Once you have a better idea of your goals, you can more easily nail down exactly what you need. Explore the following key features to help you choose the best compost machine for you.
Capacity
Electric composters come in various sizes, ranging from tabletop kitchen devices to giant industrial compost machines. You must evaluate how much waste you produce each day to get the right product for you.
If you only plan on composting kitchen scraps, a compact indoor machine might suit you well. The capacity of such a device is about a gallon, which is just enough to break down one day of food scraps for a few people.
Are you an avid gardener or homesteader? If so, you might generate more green refuse than you can process in an indoor composter. In this case, you should explore high-capacity, outdoor compost machines.
Outdoor electric composters are generally much larger than their kitchen counterparts. These electric tumblers also take longer to complete the composting process than overnight tabletop devices.
Speed
Traditional compost piles take around a year to produce rich fertilizer. Improvements in technology enable us to speed this process up using heat and agitation.
Many homesteaders use the best compost tumblers to reduce this time to a couple of weeks. This is an inexpensive way to harness solar heat and a little elbow grease to break down green waste.
Compost machines take this to the next level using electricity to generate heat and power motorized augers. The top kitchen composters can break down a gallon of food scraps in just a few hours.
This high-speed processing leaves you with a different final product than traditional methods. Instead of compost, it generates a dehydrated substance called pre-compost. Pre-compost is still a useful substance, so keep reading until the end to learn more.
Odor
If you are familiar with compost bins then you know they don’t always smell pleasant. You might balk at the idea of keeping your compost inside, for fear of stinking up your whole house.
You don’t have to worry about strong odors when using the best compost machine. These ingenious devices are engineered to break down waste without emitting any noticeable smell.
This feat is achieved through consistent airflow, steady heat, advanced filtration systems, and sturdy seals. This is so effective that many users are comfortable operating their composters right in the kitchen.
Different Composting Methods
The end product is another critical factor you should consider when purchasing the best compost machine. Depending on which type of electric composter you use, you may get moist humus or dry pre-compost.
This distinction is important when you are using homemade compost as fertilizer. Pre-compost has fewer nutrients and lacks microbial activity, but it can be further processed through other composting methods.
For the best results, sprinkle this dehydrated pre-compost mix into your vermicomposting bin. You might also consider fermenting it using the bokashi technique.
If you want a simple solution, you can mix pre-compost into garden beds and allow it to rehydrate and break down in place. Alternatively, you could simply add it to outdoor compost piles with leaves, twigs, and worms to finish it.
True composting is a biological process that requires moisture, air circulation, beneficial microbes, and time. If you want the best compost machine that produces real compost, you need the number one electric tumbler from beyondGREEN.
Compost Machine FAQ
How does an electric composter work?
The rapid electric compost machine is a relatively new household technology. These devices work much differently than other composting methods like bins and tumblers.
Electric composters quickly break down organic material through optimized airflow, steady heat, and constant movement. The refuse is finely chopped and dehydrated to remove bulk and kill odor-causing bacteria.
This process combined with the sealed vessel breaks down waste quickly without any strong odors. These appliances are ideal if you live in an apartment and lack outdoor space for traditional composting.
Rapid compost machines come with a significant tradeoff. The heating process is not selective in which bacteria are killed, so you will sacrifice beneficial microbes.
Helpful bacteria and fungi break down organic waste and excrete the nutrients that plants need to flourish. An outdoor electric tumbler is the best composting machine if you want to preserve this microbiome.
Do compost machines smell?
Traditional composting methods can produce strong smells. Electric compost machines eliminate this issue through carefully designed airflow and filtration systems.
You can minimize any unpleasant compost odor by balancing the ratio of what you add to the mix. This biological process requires two primary ingredients: one part nitrogen and twenty-five parts carbon.
Nitrogen comes from the food scraps you are tossing, and it’s often referred to as green compost. Carbon comes from brown compost, which is dry fibrous material like paper, cardboard, straw, and wood chips.
Carbon helps slow down microbial digestion and absorb excess moisture, reducing the gassy odors green compost gives off as it breaks down. Mixing in additional carbon can reduce the smell of compost machines, tumblers, bins, and piles.
What can you put in a compost machine?
You should only place plant-based refuse in most compost bins. This includes fruit and vegetable peels, stalks, cores, lawn clippings, leaves, etc. You can also add eggshells and most baked goods without any issues.
You might have heard that you cannot compost meat and dairy products. This is only partially true, and you can break animal products down with the right tools.
The best compost machines enable you to toss in these hard-to-compost ingredients and break them down into nutrient-rich fertilizer. By reducing the moisture content and raising the temperature, these appliances eliminate harmful bacteria on animal products.
What are the benefits of organic waste composting?
Did you know that food waste comprises a quarter of the volume of landfills? When all this nitrogen-rich refuse is left to rot, it releases tons of greenhouse gasses in the form of methane.
Composting is different from rotting in that it is a complex microbiological process involving various bacteria, fungi, and animals. These critters consume the waste and excrete balanced fertilizer perfect for growing plants.
Diverting your kitchen scraps from landfills to your backyard is an incredible way to go green and help the environment. That is because this process has the two-fold benefit of reducing emissions and promoting the growth of carbon-sequestering vegetation.
If you live in an apartment or condo, you might not compost due to a lack of space. Luckily, breakthroughs in the best compost machine technology now enable you to do it almost anywhere.
If you are new to composting, you should explore the different composting methods you can try at home. You can finish the pre-compost generated by rapid composters using your favorite technique.
The Best Compost Machine in 2023
Composting food waste is an easy way to reduce your impact on the environment from home. After reading this shopping guide, you should be on the right path to finding the best compost machine for you.
Do you want to know the top tips and tricks to get the most out of your new composter? Explore our website’s Composting page to learn more about this fascinating process.