Reencle, a company that makes smart composters, claims its next device will be It’s quieter, more energy-efficient, and able to handle more food scraps than its predecessor. The upgrade, called Reencle Gravity, will be available around September this year.
If an upcoming composter works as advertised, it will help households reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food waste while producing nutrient-rich fertilizer for gardens. However, the Gravity composter is also likely to eat up a significant portion of your income, as it’s expected to sell for $649. Reencle announced unreleased products at CES 2024.
Food waste is a serious climate problem in the United States, in part because it is almost always sent to landfills, where anaerobic bacteria break down the waste and spew out heat-trapping methane. But decomposition through composting in a controlled, oxygen-rich environment limits methane emissions and recovers nutrients.
Reencle, part of South Korean home products company HanmiFlexible, is trying to make “upscale” home composting a trend. Composting itself is nothing new, there are already a number of personal composting tools on the market with varying degrees of built-in technology, such as backyard glass. Still, many of these tools require outdoor space, time, and some elbow grease to turn food waste into fertilizer.
Reencle gravity composter. Image Source: Reinstall.
Reencle’s product is a little different—it’s neither a hand-cranked tumbler nor a dehydrator, like Mill’s food waste bin. Instead, the Reencle combines a sleek, SimpleHuman-like appearance with an automatic mixing paddle and a bag containing a type of bacteria (Bacillus smithii) that converts waste into uncured compost under ideal conditions. Reencle also says its composter is suitable for indoor use and doesn’t stink, but the product’s Facebook group says the results are mixed when it comes to odor.
Note that you may need to solidify the compost outdoors before using it as fertilizer, and you may need to mix it with the soil before gardening.
Compared to Reencle’s current composter, the $499 Reencle Prime, Gravity’s pricing is clearly 4 dB quieter (average 24 dB), approximately 10% more energy efficient in 24 hours (average daily consumption of 1.12 kWh). Reencle also says that the Gravity composter can process up to 3.3 pounds of food waste per day, which is 50% more than the Prime model.
While TechCrunch hasn’t tested either device yet, it at least sounds like a solid upgrade. However, neither device is cheap. If your main goal in purchasing such equipment is to reduce household climate pollution, you may also want to check if your nearest city offers municipal composting, as New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and many other cities increasingly do That way.
Also at CES, Reencle announced an upgrade to its commercial composter (the appropriately named Mega Reencle), which starts at $16,200 and can hold 44 to 220 pounds of waste.
Reencle told TechCrunch that it has sold 220,000 of its composters to date.
