We eat a lot of fruit and veggies in our house, which means that we have a lot of scraps left over — banana peels, strawberry stems, carrot tops, and coffee grounds, to name a few — and for the past several years, we've been using an outdoor composter to turn them all into nutrient-rich soil for our garden.
But, it's a pain to use. For one, it's all the way in the back of our yard, it takes a while for the scraps to break down, and it's become an attraction for rodents, who have chewed holes in it to get at the rich bounty inside.
In-home composters are a relatively new type of in-home kitchen appliance that grind up and dehydrate leftovers, so that all that remains are some dried-up grounds, which you can then use for your plants. I tested one such model, the Luma Kitchen Composter, for a month to see just how well it worked.
Price and availability
The Luma Kitchen Composter costs $399 on Amazon or through Luma's site. It first went on sale in April, 2024.
What I liked
It works quietly
There's nothing worse than a loud appliance; when I upgraded my dishwasher a few years ago, I instantly noticed how much quieter things were.
Similarly, the Luma is barely perceptible as it's working; you have to be standing within a few feet to hear anything but a faint whirring sound as its blade rotates inside.
It's easy to use
There's not much to using the Luma. You simply open the lid, throw your scraps in, put the lid back on, and press the Start button, and the machine does the rest. There's no app or anything, but you don't really need one with something this simple. The machine holds about 2.5 liters of scraps, which my family of three filled every few days.
Inside the metal canister in the machine is a metal plate and a blade that spins around slowly; food is pushed against the blade to break it up into ever smaller pieces. At the same time, the canister heats up to dehydrate everything inside.
The Luma's lid is clear, so you can peer inside to see how things are going. In the earlier stages, when there's still a lot of liquid, the lid tends to fog up with condensation.
The machine takes anywhere from 3-6 hours to break scraps down (I usually run ours overnight), and afterwards, you're left with dried grounds that look kind of like sawdust. Then, you simply pull out the inside canister (it has a convenient handle) and dump out the grounds. The dried grounds have a faint whiff that vaguely barbecue-like, but it's only noticeable when the lid is off the machine.
It's not smelly
Yes, in a perfect world, an outdoor composter won't be smelly either — so long as you remember to turn it regularly and mix things like grass clippings in with your food waste. But you know what? Life happens, so there have been plenty of summer days when I went to add things to our outdoor composter and I was greeted by a horde of fruit flies.
While you can't throw just anything into the Luma — avocado pits are a no-no — it's seriously cut down on the things we add to our outdoor composter, and in the process, has deterred pests of all sorts.
The Luma expels air through a small charcoal filter (the company says they'll last from six months to a year).
What I didn't like
It takes up a lot of space
Measuring 14.5 x 13.8 x 10 inches, the Luma takes up about as much space as my KitchenAid stand mixer — which you can see in the image above — only it's not as photogenic. If you have a small kitchen, trying to cram this in somewhere might be a problem. I'm trying to think of where else I could put mine, rather than having it in so prominent a place.
It's not cheap
At $399, the Luma costs $100 less than the comparably sized Lomi, but that's still a significant chunk of money. By comparison, a traditional outdoor tumble-style composter costs less than $100, like the FCMP Outdoor IM4000 Dual Chamber Tumbling Composter, which is $77 on Amazon.
It uses energy
You can't get much greener than an outdoor composter, which doesn't rely on anything except nature to break down your kitchen scraps. The Luma, however, draws as much as 500W to both heat and grind down your food waste; if you run it a few times a week over the course of several hours, that could add up. Still, I tested the Luma for about a month, and didn't see much of a difference in my electric bill.
Luma Kitchen Composter review: Verdict
While it may not be the greenest way to take care of food scraps, the Luma Kitchen Composter has been a game-changer for our kitchen. It's a lot more convenient than having to dump a load of raw peels and then wait, wait, and wait some more until it turns into compost for our garden — and deal with all the messiness in the interim. I do wish it didn't take up as much space, and the price is still pretty steep, even if this is one of the less expensive models out there. But for those who want to do something with their kitchen waste and who don't have room for an outdoor composter, this is a great alternative.
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