Advanced Kitchen Composts and Food Recyclers (2026)

Kitchen countertop compost is a good idea. Instead of having a stinky container of vegetable waste and coffee grounds that breed fruit flies on your counter or attract rats in your backyard, you can simply put everything in an electric composter, and at some unknown time in the future you will have a large amount of green manure to use in your garden.

Unfortunately, none of the popular kitchen appliance manufacturers do this. Although some of these devices are marketed as “composters” and come with instruction booklets and programs detailing all the ways one can compost, most kitchen machines are simply grinding and drying your food. You’ll significantly reduce your waste, and it won’t smell as bad, but if you’re hoping to put eggshells and bananas in a machine and magically produce the kind of compost you can buy at the farm, it’s not going to happen.

That is, you he can Mix a little of these ingredients and add them to the soil gradually or use them as food for a real compost pile. But again, most of these machines are designed to reduce the amount of household food. This is, in itself, a legitimate purpose, as waste food is created 24 percent of municipal solid waste, resulting in the release of methane, a polluting gasas it is in the soil.

Or maybe you want your food to be odorless and stable before you add it to your green compost bin or backyard compost pile. In any case, despite the cries of the critics of the washing leaves and corporate astroturfingThere is definitely value in these devices. They make people more aware of the food they waste. They don’t use much energy (about 1 kilowatt-hour was typical in my testing). And my main decision, a Reencle Prime (8/10, WIRED Recommends), though they make something nearby to compost.

Also, be sure to check out our tips at The Best Ways to Grow Indoors, Best Gifts for Plant Loversand Best Bird Feeders.

Updated July 2026: I’ve updated my review of Reencle gear to address the issue of broken paddles, added a long-term post on Reencle Gravity, included updates on Mill and GEME Terra II, and provided up-to-date links and pricing.

All the best

Reincle

Prime Electric Composite

As I said above, none of these machines produce ready-to-use, sustainable, fully decomposable compost, but Reencle comes very close creating data that you can retrieve from a traditional database or heap. Popular in South Korea years before it appeared in the US, Reencle comes with a Reencle Compost Starter 1.0 bag (which you can buy separately. for $65) contains activated carbon, wood pellets, glucose, and a trio of patented thermophilic microbes ready to be cut. There is also a pre-filled charcoal filter that goes into the rear.

Reencle Gravity (left) and Prime (right)

Photo: Kat Merck

Prime is too big for a kitchen counter, but it works just as easily as a trash can. The lid opens via a sensor on the bottom or a button on the control panel, and it goes to your physical items. That’s right. There are no rounds, pills, or buckets to worry about. Although this program is completely optional. Within a few hours or days, depending on the material, the crumbs will break down into something that resembles a cross between dirt and sawdust.

The smell it’s not always funbut you can reduce this with the Dry and Purify control buttons or by adding what, in the composting lexicon, is called “brown” – dry, carbonized material, such as bread or shredded paper.

Photo: Kat Merck

Reencle also loves to smell when you feed it 1.5 pounds of its favorite food per day. Unlike other machines, it can also accept meat and milk. For large families, there is Reencle Gravity ($649)which is several inches long and can hold up to 3.3 pounds of waste per day. I also tested this and found it to be quieter than the Prime—not that the Prime is any louder, only about 30 decibels. Gravity is almost silent, which is a nice bonus. However, I found that over time, the contents of Gravity went anaerobic (read: smelly) much faster than Prime. The increased volume seems to hold more moisture. If you go with Gravity, I recommend that you have a lot of brown material (old bread, shredded paper) to keep the bugs alive or add a few extra layers per day by hand with the included shovel.

When the volume reaches the fill line for each type, it’s time to release the position. At this time, you can mix the soil with potting soil at a ratio of 1:4 and let it cure for three weeks (I used a large tub in my garage). After that, you can use it for outdoor and indoor plants. I have used the following mixture to great effect indoors and outdoors.