I Tested Kitchen Composters for 2 Years. These Are the Ones I’d Buy (2026)
I Tested Kitchen Composters for 2 Years. These Are the Ones I’d Buy (2026)
我测试了厨房堆肥机两年，这些是我会购买的产品（2026年版）
The countertop kitchen composter is a lovely thought. Instead of a smelly bucket of vegetable scraps and coffee grounds breeding fruit flies on your counter or attracting rats to your backyard, you could just put it all into a nifty electric gadget, and at some undetermined point in the future you’ll have a bountiful supply of nutrient-rich compost to use in your garden. 台式厨房堆肥机是一个美好的构想。与其让一个散发臭味的桶装满蔬菜残渣和咖啡渣，在台面上滋生果蝇或在后院引来老鼠，你只需将它们全部放入一个精巧的电子设备中。在未来的某个时间点，你就能获得充足的营养丰富的堆肥，用于花园种植。
Unfortunately, none of the more popular electric kitchen composters do exactly this. Even though some of these devices are marketed as “composters” and have instruction booklets and apps detailing all the ways in which one can use compost, the vast majority of kitchen composters are just going to grind up and dry your food scraps. You will greatly reduce your food waste output, and it will no longer smell, but if you’re hoping to put eggshells and banana peels into a machine and magically scoop out the kind of compost you’d buy at the garden center, that’s just not going to happen. 遗憾的是，目前市面上流行的电动厨房堆肥机并不能完全做到这一点。尽管其中一些设备被营销为“堆肥机”，并配有说明书和应用程序，详细介绍了使用堆肥的各种方法，但绝大多数厨房堆肥机实际上只是将你的食物残渣粉碎并烘干。虽然这能大大减少你的食物垃圾排放，且不再有异味，但如果你希望把蛋壳和香蕉皮放进机器，就能神奇地铲出你在园艺中心买到的那种堆肥，那是不可能实现的。
That said, you can mix small amounts of these grounds into potting soil in tiny ratios or use them as a feeder for a “real” compost pile. But again, most of these machines are meant for reducing the volume of household food waste. This is, itself, a legitimate goal, as cast-off food makes up 24 percent of municipal solid waste, resulting in the release of methane, a destructive greenhouse gas, as it breaks down in the landfill. 话虽如此，你可以将少量这些残渣以极小的比例混合到盆栽土壤中，或者将其作为“真正”堆肥堆的原料。但再次强调，大多数此类机器的初衷是减少家庭食物垃圾的体积。这本身就是一个合理的目标，因为废弃食物占城市固体垃圾的 24%，在垃圾填埋场分解时会释放出甲烷这种破坏性的温室气体。
Or maybe you’d just like your food grounds to be odor-free and shelf-stable before adding them to your green waste bin for municipal composting or your backyard compost. In any case, despite critics’ cries of greenwashing and corporate astroturfing, there is indeed value to these devices. They make people more aware of their food waste. They don’t use a huge amount of power (around 1 kilowatt-hour was typical in my testing). And my top pick, the Reencle Prime (8/10, WIRED Recommends), even produces something close to compost. 或者，你可能只是希望在将食物残渣放入市政堆肥的绿色垃圾桶或后院堆肥堆之前，先让它们变得无味且易于储存。无论如何，尽管批评者指责其存在“漂绿”和企业虚假宣传，但这些设备确实有其价值。它们提高了人们对食物浪费的意识。它们的耗电量并不大（在我的测试中，典型耗电量约为 1 度电）。而我的首选产品 Reencle Prime（评分 8/10，WIRED 推荐）甚至能产生接近堆肥的物质。
Best Overall: Reencle Prime ($499)
最佳综合表现：Reencle Prime（499 美元）
As I mentioned above, none of these machines makes truly ready-to-use, biologically stable, fully decomposed compost, but Reencle comes the closest to creating what you’d scoop out of a traditional compost bin or pile. Popular in South Korea years before it appeared in the US, the Reencle arrives with a starter bag of Reencle Compost Starter 1.0 (which you can purchase separately for $65) containing activated carbon, wood pellets, glucose, and a trio of patented thermophilic microbes ready to chow down. There’s also a prefilled charcoal filter that slots into the back. 正如我上面提到的，这些机器中没有一台能制造出真正可直接使用、生物稳定且完全分解的堆肥，但 Reencle 最接近于制造出那种你会从传统堆肥箱或堆肥堆中铲出来的物质。Reencle 在进入美国市场前已在韩国流行多年，它随附一袋 Reencle Compost Starter 1.0（可单独以 65 美元购买），其中包含活性炭、木屑颗粒、葡萄糖以及三种准备好“大快朵颐”的专利嗜热微生物。机器背面还有一个预装的活性炭过滤器。
The Prime is too large for a kitchen counter, but it conveniently operates much like a heated trash can. The lid opens via a sensor at the bottom or a button on the control panel, and it goes into your organic matter. That’s it. There are no cycles, tablets, or auxiliary buckets to worry about. Even the app is totally optional. Within hours to days, depending on the item, the scraps break down into a material resembling a cross between dirt and sawdust. Prime 的体积对于厨房台面来说太大了，但它操作起来非常方便，就像一个带加热功能的垃圾桶。盖子可以通过底部的传感器或控制面板上的按钮打开，你只需将有机物质投入其中即可。就是这么简单。无需担心什么循环模式、药片或辅助桶。甚至连应用程序也是完全可选的。根据投入物的不同，残渣会在几小时到几天内分解成一种介于泥土和木屑之间的物质。
The smell isn’t always pleasant, but you can usually mitigate this with the control panel’s Dry and Purify buttons or by adding what, in composting lexicon, is called “browns”—dry, carbon-rich materials, like bread or shredded paper. 气味并不总是令人愉悦，但你通常可以通过控制面板上的“干燥（Dry）”和“净化（Purify）”按钮来缓解，或者添加堆肥术语中所说的“棕色物质”——即干燥、富含碳的材料，如面包或碎纸。
The Reencle also tends not to stink when you feed it its preferred diet of 1.5 pounds of scraps per day. Unlike other machines, it can also accept meat and dairy. For larger households, there’s the Reencle Gravity ($649), which is a couple of inches taller and can accept 3.3 pounds of waste a day. I also tested this and found it to be significantly quieter than the Prime—not that the Prime is noticeably loud, only about 30 decibels. The Gravity is nearly silent, which is a nice bonus. I did, however, find that over time, the Gravity contents went anaerobic (read: smelly) much faster than with the Prime. The increased volume seemed to retain more moisture. If you go with a Gravity, I recommend keeping plenty of browns (old bread, shredded paper) on hand to maintain microbial balance or adding in an additional few sessions of manual stirring per day with the included shovel. 当你每天喂食 1.5 磅它偏好的残渣时，Reencle 通常不会产生异味。与其他机器不同，它还可以处理肉类和乳制品。对于人口较多的家庭，还有 Reencle Gravity（649 美元），它比 Prime 高出几英寸，每天可处理 3.3 磅垃圾。我也测试了这款产品，发现它比 Prime 安静得多——虽然 Prime 本身并不算吵，只有约 30 分贝。Gravity 几乎是静音的，这是一个不错的加分项。然而，我发现随着时间的推移，Gravity 内部的物质比 Prime 更快进入厌氧状态（即：产生臭味）。增加的容量似乎保留了更多的水分。如果你选择 Gravity，我建议手头准备充足的“棕色物质”（旧面包、碎纸）以维持微生物平衡，或者每天使用附带的铲子额外进行几次手动搅拌。
When the volume reaches the fill line on each model, it’s time to scoop out the grounds. At this point, you can mix the grounds with potting soil at a 1:4 ratio and leave it to cure for three weeks (I used a large tub in my garage). Afterward, you can use it for both outdoor and indoor plants. I’ve used the resultant mix to positive effect both indoors and outdoors. 当容量达到每款机型的填充线时，就该铲出残渣了。此时，你可以将残渣与盆栽土壤按 1:4 的比例混合，并放置三周进行熟化（我在车库里用了一个大桶）。之后，你就可以将其用于室内外植物。我已经在室内外使用了这种混合物，效果良好。
Eighteen-Month Update: For years, I’ve read about people experiencing the stainless steel stirring paddles breaking off in the Reencle Prime. And after a year and a half of using the device, the same fate has finally found me. I contacted Reencle to ask what customers should do in this situation. I learned that if the Reencle is within the warranty period (two years for units purchased on or after May 13, 2026; one year for units purchased previously), they can contact customer service to receive a replacement. 18个月更新：多年来，我一直读到有人反映 Reencle Prime 的不锈钢搅拌桨断裂的问题。在使用该设备一年半后，我终于也遇到了同样的情况。我联系了 Reencle 询问客户在这种情况下该怎么办。我了解到，如果 Reencle 还在保修期内（2026年5月13日及之后购买的产品保修期为两年；之前购买的产品为一年），客户可以联系客服申请更换。