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The more I learn about composting, the more I think of the song “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” by Yusuf / Cat Stevens: “Cause there’s a million ways to go.” Aboveground or underground, hot or cool, batch or continuous—the list goes on. If you’re wondering what you need to get started, below seven staffers discuss their favorite compost bins and composters, from countertop scrap bins to larger yard composters.

The best approach for you will depend on your time and space constraints, as well as on your local infrastructure. You can definitely use what you have at home to start composting, and we include some free or cheap options (such as using your freezer or a large bucket). Consider this list as a starting point—and if you have a favorite composter or method, share it with us in the comments below.

Oggi Countertop Compost Pail (about $30 at the time of publication)

I have municipal composting in San Francisco, and I get a green bin for our yard and food waste (including meat). The compost gets picked up weekly, along with our garbage and recycling, and is trucked to a composting facility near wine country. Eventually, it ends up fertilizing vineyards and vegetable farms. All I have to do is store my scraps between trips down to the garage, where the bins live. For that, I bought an Oggi Countertop Compost Pail, which sits between my sink and fridge. The pail part takes 3-gallon compost bags (which San Francisco accepts, but check with your city before using compostable bags). And the vented lid has spaces for two charcoal filters, which Oggi recommends replacing every two to three months. (I spent an embarrassingly long time trying and failing to disassemble the lid to replace the filters. It turns out you pinch the old ones to pull them out and then half-fold, half-wedge the fresh ones into place.) I do put the bin in the dishwasher occasionally to give it a real cleaning. What I like the most about the Oggi is that I never see fruit flies around it or smell its contents—unless I lift the lid to add more scraps.

OXO Easy-Clean Compost Bin ($20 at the time of publication)

I live in Portland, Oregon, which has a citywide composting program. Prior to buying the OXO Easy-Clean Compost Bin, I’d used a variety of options that I hadn’t put much thought into. Consequently, I wasn’t particularly happy with any of them. When I sat down to look for a bin this time, I knew my criteria. I wanted a bin that would fit a 3-gallon bag and that I could easily remove and take out to the city-issued compost bin (which stays at the side of my house). I wanted a bin that looked decent, since I tend to keep my personal bin on the counter, close to where I do my food prep. I wanted to be able to clean the bin easily. And perhaps most important, I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t leak; I try to avoid putting anything too wet in the bin, but I’ve still dealt with unpleasant spills over the years. The OXO bin checked all of those boxes for me. It holds a 3-gallon bag, which I probably take out and replace every other day, and it’s unobtrusive-looking. Also, the lid pops off, so it’s super easy to clean, and it doesn’t have any slits or joins that can leak liquids.

—Erin Price, audience development manager for reader relationships

There’s no getting around it: Compost can be smelly and attract fruit flies, especially in a small, hot apartment. When I lived in New York City, I stored my organic trash in paper bags in the freezer to cut down on the unpleasantness until I could drop it off at the Union Square compost bin. In April 2021, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that curbside composting was returning to the city. But if you have room in your freezer, you still might want to chill your banana peels and lettuce ends to make your garbage less stinky. New York paused compost pickup because of the pandemic, but it’s coming back on a voluntary basis this fall; if you’re in New York, and your building doesn’t sign up, you can look up your closest drop-off program. These days, I live in San Francisco, where we have municipal composting, and I run food scraps down to our building’s bin after every meal. The city picks it up at the end of the week, and I have a little more freezer space.

My husband and I maintain two systems for dealing with our produce scraps. One is a worm bin, which involves some maintenance and, of course, handling worms. The simpler one is a large plastic bucket with a tight-sealing lid (any 5-gallon bucket works), which we use to collect scraps throughout the week before dropping them off at a community garden on Sundays. Cooking as much as we do, we just couldn’t fit all the scraps we generated into our packed freezer, so we settled on the bucket. We keep it in an out-of-the-way spot in our entryway, and we have found an easy method to keep it from smelling or attracting pests: Every time we dump in a batch of scraps, we cover them with shredded, unbleached paper (from items like brown paper bags or cardboard egg cartons). This seems to neutralize everything successfully.

Algreen SoilSaver Composter ($120 at the time of publication)

Despite being DINKs (double income, no kids), my partner and I produce a ton of food waste because we cook almost all of our meals. We also love to garden. So when we bought our first home last spring, a compost bin was an inevitability. We knew we needed a lot of room, and that ruled out most reasonably priced tumbling composters. After some extensive research, we settled on the Algreen SoilSaver Composter, which we stationed adjacent to our raised garden beds. This composter is huge, simple to assemble, and foolproof to use: You just unlock the two twist locks on the top and remove it to add your scraps. After time and microbes have done their thing, a small door at the base lets you access the fully composted soil on the bottom. Ours is almost always full, despite the generous amount of space and the fact that we regularly use the compost in the garden.

Mantis Compact ComposTumbler ($300 at the time of publication)

I began composting about a decade ago to reduce my carbon footprint and give sustainable gardening a try. Since then, I’ve used stacks, bags, tubs, and worms. Each system yielded rich compost, but it also required sweat, patience, know-how, and storage space. So when I was finally ready to level up to a quality tumbler, a trusted friend whose garden was the envy of the neighborhood convinced me to go with the Mantis Compact ComposTumbler. Three years later, the Mantis has not disappointed. Every design detail has ease of use in mind. Rotating the barrel with the gear-driven crank is a breeze, even when the Mantis is completely full. Its steel barrel is just as sturdy as it was the day I bought it, which is impressive in Nevada, where plastic turns brittle after a few months of sun exposure. Plus, the Mantis contains odors, so you can count yourself as a considerate neighbor. You do have to assemble the tumbler, but if you follow the directions down to tightening every screw, you end up with a solid, sturdy tumbler.

At the end of 14 to 21 days, I just open the hatch, park a wagon under the barrel, and turn the crank to harvest rich compost with minimal effort. (If I were shopping for a tumbler now, I’d go with the Mantis ComposT-Twin, which would give me the option of harvesting compost weekly.) Best of all, the Mantis website has answered every question I’ve ever had about using the tumbler, and it provides great general composting tips. (At this writing, the ComposTumbler is sold out. Mantis says it is working on restocking this composter for late summer.)

Worm Factory 360 ($130 at the time of publication)

My husband and I got a worm bin early in the pandemic, when New York City’s composting programs shut down, and he lovingly maintains it. We use the unattractive but very effective Worm Factory 360, which we populated with several hundred red composting worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm. Those worms churn through a good amount of scraps and, in a matter of months, turn them into a rich, ready-to-use compost with the texture of chocolate cake—we’ve already generated enough to re-pot all of our houseplants and give bags away to a few friends. The compost is easy to collect because the tiered system allows you to lure the worms out of your finished compost by adding scraps to the tray above. The setup doesn’t smell, it doesn’t attract fruit flies, and overall it just isn’t as messy as it sounds (no, the worms won’t escape). But even my husband, who delights in checking on his worms every day, cautions that it’s really more of a hobby than an easy method of scrap disposal. Although it’s not hard (our Worm Factory has instructions and tips printed on the lid), you do have to pay attention to what and how much you’re feeding your worms. It helps to chop up or even blend the scraps you put in, and it’s important to balance “green” matter (fresh produce) with “brown” matter (paper scraps, dried leaves, and so forth). Worms are also very temperature-sensitive, as we learned during a heat wave last summer. We had to move the bin into our air-conditioned bedroom, but the ideal would be to keep your bin in a cool basement.

Vitamix FoodCycler FC-50 ($400 at the time of publication)

Last summer I was gifted a Vitamix FoodCycler FC-30 electric composter (predecessor to the current Vitamix FoodCycler FC-50), which turns my family’s food scraps into ready-to-use fertilizer for our garden. We live in Portland, Oregon, and we had already been composting for a while, thanks to the city’s curbside-pickup program. At first I thought the dedicated appliance was a bit unnecessary, but it’s so efficient that we’ve been using it nearly nonstop ever since. The FoodCycler is about as big as an 18-pack of toilet paper rolls, so it can fit into a closet or cupboard, and it’s quiet enough to run regularly. It can break down fruit cores, vegetable peels, dairy, and even some meat scraps into a dry, organic matter that we use to fertilize our garden beds. (Technically it doesn’t make compost, which takes longer to break down, but we still use the by-product of dried and ground food waste as a fertilizer—if you get a dehydrator, check the manufacturer’s recommendations.) First the machine dries scraps, and then it grinds them, and the volume reduction it achieves in a few hours is pretty amazing (the timing depends on how wet or thick the contents of the bucket are). We wash the bucket between loads, and it can sometimes take a little extra elbow grease to get out any food that hardens onto the bucket. This machine requires regular filter changes about every three to four months, too. But for us, it’s worth the effort. Even if gardening isn’t your main priority, this machine is still a great option for reducing your daily food waste.

Anna Perling is a staff writer covering kitchen gear at Wirecutter. During her time here, she has reported on various topics including sports bras, board games, and light bulbs. Previously she wrote food and lifestyle pieces for Saveur and Kinfolk magazines. Anna is a mentor at Girls Write Now and a member of the Online News Association.

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