Have you been considering a smart composter for your home? Do you want a better way to deal with food waste? I’ve tested two of the most popular smart composter models, Reencle and Mill.
Reencle Home Composter ($499)
Mill Food Recycler ($999)
Factors You Should Consider When Choosing a Smart Composter
Your use case may vary a lot depending on whether you live in a NewYork City apartment or in the Midwest countryside.
I live on a quarter acre lot with a large garden in suburban Idaho. I cook quite a bit and produce a good deal of food scraps. I have a four-bay outdoor compost setup built with recycled wooden pallets.
So why did I get interested in smart composters? Making compost isn’t rocket science, and already our compost pile produces high-quality compost—otherwise known as “gardener’s gold.”
However, our countertop food scrap collector has often been a source of irritation, as it quickly becomes a foulsmelling rot pile if not emptied and rinsed out daily. So, when I started seeing ads for smart composters and learned that you can even put meat scraps in them too, my interest was piqued.
Sustainability
When it comes to sustainability, there are several factors to consider.
- Composting without a smart composter is free. It doesn’t take any electricity. All it requires is throwing your food scraps in a pile, with a little thought given to the pile’s carbon and nitrogen composition.
- Neither of the smart composters I tested produce a product remotely resembling compost. They produce something that makes it easier to deal with food scraps and could be thought of as “pre-compost” that doesn’t stink up your kitchen.
- Smart composters can undoubtedly reduce inputs of food waste into landfills. However, they require input of energy (electricity) to do so. More detailed analysis should be done to evaluate if the landfill savings are worth the carbon cost.
Form Factor
The Mill stands head and shoulders above Reencle in this category. Literally, it’s almost twice as tall. At 27.2 inches, the Mill is a perfect height for scraping the contents of your plate into. The Reencle comes in at a height of 18.4 inches, which means you’re going to be bending over to use it. It’s too short to keep on the floor and too large to keep on the counter. I think all adults and most kids old enough to be using your composter would prefer the Mill.
Design
Mill is the clear winner in the design category. It has a foot pedal that opens the lid, which is crucial for hands-free operation. Push down with your foot, and you can hold a plate with one hand and scrape with the other.
Reencle uses a motion sensor to open for a hands-free operation. But here’s the rub. It’s not instantaneous and I found it unreliable. Our cats, however, were excellent at opening it via the motion sensor. In fact, they found it to be a fun game that would occasionally waft undesirable compost vapors around the kitchen. You can turn the motion sensor opening off via its buttons. But then you’re stuck without hands-free operation. And if you have persistent animals, they may figure out how to operate the buttons to turn the motion sensor back on—like ours did.
Access to your composter presents potential safety concerns. Both machines operate by grinding and drying your food scraps. They each have safety shut-offs that stop the grinding action when the lid is open, but I would prefer to have little hands not able to access it at all. The Mill’s foot pedal is heavy—a small child or big dog is not going to open it. It also has an optional lock you can program with the app, so it can only be opened after a specific button sequence is pressed—a sequence I would not expect animals or little ones to solve.
The Mill is also easier to empty. The metal bucket comes out of the device completely and can be turned upside down and emptied. No such luck with Reencle. Reencle comes with a plastic trowel you have to empty out one small shovelful at a time (likely because you’re not supposed to empty it completely to preserve its microbial environment).
Setup & Maintenance
The Mill setup process was seamless. Plug it in, download the app, and it’s ready to go. The iOS app walks you through setup and shows you how to program the run-time and lock settings. Then all you have to do is throw food in and empty it when it reaches the “full” line (which was every three weeks for our household). The Mill comes labeled with a handy chart of what you can and can’t put in it, and the app also has more detail if you want to know about specific items.
Reencle has a more complex setup, in some ways because it’s a more complicated device. Reencle is trying to produce legitimate compost, so instead of just drying and grinding, it tries to mimic a more natural compost process. You start by adding the starter kit—which is compressed wood pellets (resembling those you’d use in a Traeger pellet grill), charcoal, and a bacterial inoculant to help decompose your food scraps. There is no app for Reencle, and I didn’t find the instructions to be crystal clear. You have to manage the moisture level in Reencle by checking it periodically. If it’s too wet, it’ll get stinky, and if it’s too dry, it won’t really be decomposing.
What exactly is too wet or too dry? I was never sure. The instructions state that it may grow mold on the top of the machine, something I found to be true. It may not be the worst type of mold, but I didn’t love it.
Smell
The Mill wins again in the smell category. In six weeks of use, we never got an undesirable whiff from the Mill. The Reencle did have a couple periods of smelling pretty sour, though still nothing like your typical food scrap bucket. After some time, I started to question: do you really want a mini compost pile in your house? Or do you want something to dry and grind the food, rendering it non-smelly and easier to deal with?
Noise
This is the first category where Reencle can be considered the winner. The Reencle runs intermittently 24/7, but it is very quiet. Unless it gets too dry, then it can start to creak and squeak. The Mill has a noticeable hum, and though you can program it to run at night only or at times when you’re out of the house. It could be bothersome if you lived in a one-room studio and had to sleep while it ran.
Food
Both Reencle and Mill took nearly everything I threw at them in stride, with a few exceptions. Mill could not handle teabags, as the strings tangled around its rotating gears. They don’t recommend that you put tea bags in, I was just trying to use it for everything I could. Reencle, on the other hand, shredded up teabags no problem. I enjoyed being able to put meat scraps into both machines instead of tossing them in the trash. I found it easier to drop a whole chicken carcass into the Mill just based on its standing height and opening size.
Price
With Mill winning so many categories above, you probably guessed there’s no way it could win in price—and you’re right. Mill retails at $999, compared to Reencle at $499.
Pickup
Mill has a program where you can box up and send your food grounds back to them. You can schedule pickups through the app. While this program didn’t make sense for my use, it may be useful if you live in a New York City apartment (though the carbon footprint from electricity use and shipping, compared to landfill waste reduction, should be further explored).
End Product
While the end product from the Reencle is slightly closer to behaving like real compost than Mill’s product (which they refer to as food grounds), both are far from true compost. I wouldn’t add either end product directly into a garden bed or plant directly into it. Personally, I add them into my outdoor composting system for further decomposition. In theory, they will create usable compost faster than traditional piles because they have been ground up, increasing surface area for easier decomposition.
My Smart Composter Top Pick
I tested the Mill and Reencle devices for six weeks, and the winner surprised me. I went into the test fully expecting to crown Reencle based on what I had read about the two machines. But it was clear early on that the Mill was our household’s preferred device.
Top image credit: Lubov Chipurko / Shutterstock.com
