Why I am obsessed* with my food recycler!!!!
*mostly
I was gifted a food recycler and I am changed. It has taught me a lot. So here we go:
Food recyclers — sometimes called countertop composters — are compost-adjacent, but they do not technically compost (more on this in a bit). I was sent this not especially attractive number (but not an eyesore, either) called the FoodCycler Eco 3, that bills itself as “a convenient solution to eliminate food waste. Ideal for the busy home, the Eco 3 quietly grinds your food waste into plant food, reducing the amount of trash you take out.”
I’ve been using this food recycler for almost two months now. Before I get into the details, I have to come clean about something: I stopped composting when I became a mom (to humans) almost two years ago.
I know, I know. There are plenty of reasons why I stopped storing food scraps in my freezer and dropping them off at the farmers market, and I could go into it. But I think the biggest factor was: I was really tired. I never felt free from the environmental guilt syndrome that plagued me as I scraped plates of uneaten scraps into the trash, but I found a way to push those guilty feelings off to the side.
But now, with a little more pep in my step and the opportunity to try out a tool that could help simplify the whole process, I am renewed (but still tired). There’s a lot I’d like to explore about the intersection between motherhood and social responsibility, but not right now. Right now we’re talking about throwing banana peels in a little canister and marveling at how, overnight, it becomes dirt.
Let’s GO:
What is a food recycler and why would you use one?
A food recycler is a device that processes food waste into soil-like material. The end result is a gritty, brown material that has the consistency of dried out coffee grounds mixed with granola and some dog hair (are you sold or what?). The machine works by grinding, mixing, and heating to process scraps into little teensy pieces within a matter of hours.
The end product, sometimes referred to as “pre-compost” isn’t the same as compost, exactly, because compost contains live microbes that do the work of the decomposition.
Both compost and pre-compost can be used as a soil amendment, or a material people add to gardens to amp up the nutrition and help their plants grow. Food grounds typically have fewer nutrients, but they can also be added to compost piles/bins after the fact.
OK, but why?
Why take a step to grind up your food waste before letting nature take over and do its thing? There are plenty of reasons, and some of them personal. For me, storing bags of onion peels and old rice and mushy nectarines wasn’t working any more. My freezer was overflowing with trash, and I needed the space for meal prep and to cut out some everyday life clutter. I also wasn’t finding the time to get in my car and drive the scraps to the drop-off center (if I still lived in a walkable city, this might not be the case).
By recycling the scraps, the volume of your food waste dramatically decreases (pictures below). It’s pretty magical to witness a full canister of food turn into a few inches of dirt. There is something so satisfying about the transformation. I still do need to drop off my grounds as they accumulate, but because they take up so much less space (still in the freezer for now), I can stretch out the time between drop offs.
Recycling food takes a matter of hours, while composting food can take weeks to months.
For people who compost at home, food recyclers are pretty bad ass because they can process many more materials than the typical backyard pile can. Por ejemplo, the food recycler can grind up bones, meat, and dairy, while home composters are typically cautioned against adding such foods to their pile. (These materials can technically be composted, but require a lot of work and pre-processing, like cooking bones, scraping off meat, and routinely measuring the temperature of your compost pile. It’s a lot of effort and you’ve got to be dedicated to get it done). In this way, a food recycler can help prevent more food waste than traditional composting alone.
Other reasons you might want to recycle your food scraps:
To make your trash smell less bad
So you can take the trash out much less often
To prevent fruit flies and maggots from making your home their home
Because you’re nauseated by the amount of food you waste
You want to feel like you’re doing something about climate change (consider this machine a household virtue signaler. Gorgeous!)
Do you want a list of things I’ve put in this food recycler so far?
Avocado pits and peels (don’t forget to remove the sticker)
Sandwich crusts
Eggshells
Apple cores
Old fruit and vegetables
Food that has been in my freezer for way too long
Every dinner my children have thrown on the floor
Wet lettuce
Banana and clementine peels
A bunch of full clementines that were “off”
Pistachio shells
Cooked leftover chicken
Cooked leftover rice
Other stuff
What I liked about the food recycler:
You can add things while it’s running — a nice perk when you just cracked an egg and you’re like nooooo, waittttttt!
You run the device overnight; while there is a small humming noise, it’s not any worse than the sound of a running dishwasher.
Have I mentioned how cool it is to turn a voluminous bin of food scraps into a little bit of dirt?
It allots for way more room in my freezer so I can hoard a bunch of it before needing to drop off the grounds at the compost facility.
There are no foul odors 👃.
What I didn’t like about the food recycler:
Every model of food recycler is different, so some of these are specific to the Eco3, while other gripes might apply to any food recycler.
The capacity of this specific model is kind of small if you waste a lot (this offers some food for thought and room for self-evaluation: Why am I filling the food recycler every day, and how can I adjust my cooking and consumption habits so that I’m not creating as much waste to begin with).
At $499.99, it is expensive!!
You’re supposed to empty the bin of its food grounds every time the process ends before using it again. As you can tell in the photos, the grounds don’t take up a lot of space. Somewhat often I found myself wanting to put shit in the bin, but I had yet to empty the grounds. When I was lazy or in a rush, I’d just store the new food scraps in my fridge and transfer them to the food recycler after I willed myself to transfer the grounds to a bag and put it in my freezer.
It takes up counter space. That’s annoying.
There’s room for improvement when it comes to design: It seems like many folks keep the actual device in a pantry or somewhere it goes unseen, and leave out the little bucket that stores the food scraps on their countertop until its full. As an apartment dweller, I don’t have the luxury of more space. I would love this food recycler even more if it sat on the floor like a garbage can (this design does exist, and I love Mill for it).
Related to the design, this specific food recycler is not necessarily something I’d expect guests (or even stubborn household members) to use. It’s positioned in a weird corner of my kitchen, and requires some finagling, and also for people to get a little intimate with their food scraps. The garbage pail design is a better alternative in terms of this qualm.
Do I think *you* should get a food recycler?
Maybe! It depends on your lifestyle, hopes, and dreams. I think if you’re looking for a way to cut food waste and feel upset every time you throw food in the trash, this could be your ticket. Let me know what questions you have, I’d love to weigh the pros and cons together.
Do I care about anything other than my food recycler?
Somewhat. Here are a few things I’ve been ~ engaging with ~ as of late that feel worthy of sharing:
‘I’m a vegetarian — with one exception’ (hint: CLAMS!!!!)
Tyson Foods Faces Greenwashing Lawsuit Over ‘Climate-Smart’ Brazen Beef (hint: there’s really no such thing as climate-friendly beef)
‘Food is what we have in common. Why don’t we hear more from the candidates about it?’ My only positive memories of the 2016 election season are around covering food and politics. I ran a (now defunct) newsletter for a media company that tracked big food’s political savvy and dissected politicians’ relationship to food, and while some of it was very light and dumb, I do think it kept readers focused and engaged. I’m with Mark Bittman (author of the linked NYT’s piece) here; we really haven’t learned much about our candidate’s relationship to food (a little, but not much) nor their policies, which are increasingly important.
Watching this Nate Bargatze sketch on SNL was the first time it occurred to me that the English language has different words for certain animals when they are living versus when they are to be eaten by humans.
Cows = beef. Pigs = pork. (But chickens = chicken). This is interesting to me especially as my children learn about animals and then later, in the same day, eat those animals. I wonder what kind of reckoning, if any, they will have with their relationship to animals as food. (My current philosophy is that they can eat meat, but I’m not making it. They eat the stuff their dad makes them, and that’s fine.)
Have you had enough garbage for today? TTYL
I’m so glad you mentioned this and then this article appeared the very next day!