This Countertop Gadget Turns Food Scraps to Fertilizer in Seconds

Vitamix, the producers of arguably the world’s best blender, have turned their engineering genius to composting at home. Anybody with a composting bin knows the annoyance of having to empty out their sink-top bucket every day or so before it starts smelling, but the new FoodCycler FC-50 (the new quieter version of their FC-30) transforms one of the oldest horticultural practices a high-tech, low-smell affair. Tricked out with a robust grinding mechanism, a carbon filter, and an air-tight storage bucket, and taking up only 1 square foot of countertop, the machine makes composting even easier than making a pot of coffee.

Simply throw whatever suitable scraps you produce throughout the day (banana peels, parmesan rinds, chicken skin, and yes, those coffee grounds), grind them down, and empty the bin once it’s full. If the machine can reduce a tomato to a 10th its size, then quick math suggests you’ll be doing compost duty much less frequently than when you do it the old-fashioned way. The nutrient rich, finely ground end product of your minimal efforts is a fertilizer that can be mixed into gardening soil and used immediately. None of the waiting, none of the smell…even the most fastidious gardeners should hop off the composting fence.