Kitchen Compost Bins We Love

After testing seven specially designed compost bins, I still prefer a simple mixing bowl for collecting my kitchen scraps. Using the wide mouth of a mixing bowl was liberating after fiddling with lids and bins with narrow openings.

If you’re someone who cooks a lot of fresh produce, you’ll probably appreciate how easy it is to scrape stems, peels, and cores directly off the cutting board with the back of a knife. Mixing bowls are available in a range of sizes, so you can find one that is large enough to hold a heap of cast-offs, and crucially, is easy to clean.

Top pick

Cuisinart Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls with Lids

A freezer-safe mixing bowl

A bowl from this multipurpose set is freezer-safe, durable, and space-efficient, and the lids help contain odors during the day.

Buying Options

$40 from Amazon

$40 from Home Depot

$40 from Walmart

If you empty your compost bowl regularly, you should be able to manage odors and fruit flies, but you can always cover the bowl with a plate, beeswax wrap, or other covering. Mixing bowls with matching lids—such as the freezer-safe Cuisinart Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls with Lids—have an airtight seal that might help keep odors at bay.

You can use it without a top, too. “Candidly, I think my food scraps are pretty,” said Cassandra Marketos, compost expert at Edendale Grove Community Compost Hub in Los Angeles and author of Compost This Book and “The Rot,” a newsletter about composting. “I like looking at them as they accumulate. They’re a lovely reminder of care—I cooked well that week, I fed myself and my friends, and we ate food that was good for us. It makes me happy.”

For freezer storage, a flexible bag is the best option for most people. Though a bag is floppy and not leakproof, it can be stuffed into odd voids and crannies. It can also be plopped into a mixing bowl (see above) as a liner during meal prep then squished back into cold storage.

Staff pick

Standard Baggu Bag

A tote to stow and carry

If you prefer the flexibility and portability of a bag, this nylon tote is lightweight, washable, and squishable (so it can fit in the freezer).

Buying Options

$42 from Amazon
(pack of three)

$14 from Baggu

Any flexible bag works, like a reused plastic bag or even a paper one. But a reusable nylon tote, like our staff-favorite Standard Baggu, has greater capacity than many zip-top bags, is washable, and may outlast single-use plastic, which can get brittle over time.

It can also double as transport: New York Times Cooking recipe developer and food columnist Melissa Clark told us that she uses a Baggu bag to drop off scraps at her local composting program.

If you’re in search of a compost bin with more odor control, we liked the 1-gallon stainless steel Package Free Compost Bin Container. It’s better looking and less expensive than similar bins, and it comes with a charcoal filter that helps reduce odors.

Top pick

Package Free Compost Bin Container

A sleeker stainless steel pail

A stainless steel option with a replaceable charcoal filter, this bin is sleek, sturdy, easy to clean, and less expensive than similar styles. You do need to buy the right-size filters online.

Buying Options

$24 from Package Free Shop

Because the Package Free compost bin is made of sturdy stainless steel, it should last you a long time—as in, your whole life. A friend of mine, an architect, has used hers for three years, and it’s held up to daily use.

The hinged handle makes the pail easy to transport and empty. The bucket and fully removable lid (minus the filter, which can be hand-washed) is dishwasher-safe and can also easily fit in a sink to hand-wash.

We ordered the Package Free compost bin online, and although it’s not literally package-free (it ships in a cardboard box), it arrived in considerably less packaging than its stainless steel competition, and with zero plastic.

The Package Free compost bin isn’t perfect, though. The 7-inch diameter opening requires some precision when tipping scraps from a cutting board into the pail. And you need to buy the right-size, 7.25-inch filters, which are only available online. To extend the filter’s life, wash it by hand with soap and water and hang it to dry.

Also great

OXO Easy-Clean Compost Bin

A simple plastic bin

This no-nonsense plastic bin with a comfortable-to-hold handle keeps a low profile, and its flip-up lid pops off for cleaning. But it’s not the best choice if you’re trying to cut plastic from your kitchen.

Buying Options

$23 from Amazon

Over the years, a number of staffers have been fans of the OXO Easy-Clean Compost Bin, and in our testing, we found it held up to the hype. Still, we think that our stainless steel pick has a better lifetime value.

The flip-up lid and ergonomic, hinged handle make it easy to use. Because of a lip on the lid, you can flip it open and closed with one hand or a knife during the course of cooking.

However, the lid doesn’t seal, and it’s less effective at containing odor than the charcoal filter pails we tested. You can also keep it in the freezer to contain odors, as our accessibility editor Claire Perlman has done for the past five years.

When it came time to clean the bin, the shiny smooth surfaces and interior curves made hand-washing it easy. The lid is fully removable, and the internal bucket can also be run through the dishwasher.

The plastic pail comes in 0.75- and 1.75-gallon sizes. We tested and recommend the bigger bin, which has the advantage of holding more—in theory, its size extends the time between trips to empty it out, though not by so long that the scraps putrefy.

If you want a smaller size, we prefer the 1-gallon, stainless steel Package Free Compost Bin Container over the 0.75-gallon OXO bin. It costs a similar amount but is slightly more generous in size, has an effective odor filter, and the steel material should last a lifetime.

If you have access to municipal pick-up or compost at home, you should stick to a small collector. But if you go through a large volume of fruits and vegetables and drop scraps off at a garden or farmers market once a week, then you may need a bigger vessel.

In that case, your best bet for the money is a heavy-duty bucket with a tight-fitting lid, like the Leaktite 5 Gal Foodsafe Bucket. Due to its size, a 5-gallon bucket is best for people who have a lot of kitchen scraps to collect, aren’t squeamish about getting a little splattered, and can drop it off by car or walk with a wagon.

Top pick

Leaktite 5 Gal Foodsafe Bucket

A heavy-duty bucket

A heavy-duty plastic bucket with an airtight lid can hold more food waste than a countertop bin. It’s also secure for transport, but it’s hard to carry when full.

Buying Options

$7 from Home Depot

$7 from Lowe's

Because the lid is sealed, your kitchen scraps can and likely will become hot and vile. To avoid this, freeze your scraps and use the sealable bucket mainly for transport. But for those who are short on space, try adding moisture-absorbing materials like newspaper, brown paper, or wood shavings, as Renée Crowley, deputy director of the LES Ecology Center, recommends. “By absorbing the excess moisture in your food scraps you can reduce odors and make the bin less attractive to pests,” said Crowley.

Also great

Cambro Square Food Storage Container

Multipurpose storage

A workhorse of professional kitchens, this low-maintenance container has a tight-fitting lid and a square base that fits efficiently into corners of the freezer, fridge, or countertop.

Buying Options

$9 from Webstaurant Store

$19 from Amazon

For a compact and fully sealable option, we like Cambro Square Food Storage Containers, which come in various sizes; we’re partial to the 6-quart size for collecting compost. They have tight-fitting, leak-preventing lids that are effective at keeping smells inside.

With the clear plastic, you can see how full the vessel is getting, and the squared sides make it easy to tuck into a corner out of the way on the counter, in the freezer, or in the fridge. Once you’re done, throw it in the dishwasher. You’ll still probably want to put this in a tote to take to the farmer’s market or community garden.

Top pick

Pennington 8-inch Medium Terra Cotta Clay Pot

A terra-cotta gardening pot

Affordable and widely available, a clay pot is a plastic-free option, and it comes in a range of sizes. But you should place it on a dish or planter saucer to prevent leaks.

Buying Options

$7 from Home Depot

Pennington 8-inch Medium Terra Cotta Clay Saucer

A terra-cotta planter saucer

These terra-cotta clay planter dishes come in a range of sizes and keep your countertop dry.

Buying Options

$7 from Home Depot

Clay garden pots are another multipurpose vessel available in a range of size options that can accommodate upwards of 2 gallons, and they’re a favorite of Natasha Pickowicz, a produce-forward pastry chef and avid amateur gardener. These pots are affordable and available at most hardware stores and gardening centers. A clay pot is also plastic-free, and it can break back down into clay when you’re done with it.

Pickowicz covers her garden pot with a spare plate to store spent tea leaves, coffee grounds, and vegetable peelings in her garden. (She uses the scraps she collects to make a nutritious plant-based compost tea to fertilize plants.) The pot also works well on the countertop, provided you keep it on a sturdy dish or planter saucer to prevent leaking.

Before you spring for a special vessel, compost expert Cassandra Marketos recommends experimenting with what you have on hand. Anything works: mixing bowls, takeout containers, old jars, buckets, repurposed bags. Try that test bin in a few locations, like by your sink, in the fridge or freezer, by the trash, or on your counter. Here are some tips to help you find just what you need.

Consider how you eat. How much you cook at home, and what you tend to eat, will determine what size and style of vessel works most seamlessly for you. A vessel with about a 1-gallon capacity and at least a 6-inch opening is a good starting point: It’s big enough to be practical and user-friendly and small enough so you take it out regularly (anywhere between every night to once a week), which will deter odors and mold. The more often you take out your unfrozen compost, the less it will smell.

Consider the fridge or freezer. If you know you won’t be emptying your kitchen scraps frequently, or if you’re finding odors to be a problem, try freezing them until you’re ready to drop them off at a community garden or farmers market. Crowley also suggested using the fridge.

Look for a simple and smooth bin, with a fully removable lid. We recommend a pail with smooth surfaces, with very few nooks and ledges, and that is made of a single material, such as stainless steel. These features all help you get a quick and deep clean. A removable lid also makes it more likely that the pail will fit in your dishwasher or sink, no matter the shape of your faucet.

Consider a filter. If you want extra odor protection, a bin with a charcoal filter can be effective, as long as you still empty it regularly. Ali Greer and Eric Tomassini, who run Avenue 33, a regenerative farm in Los Angeles, suggest a filter if you’re not emptying your bin more than once a week or if your kitchen gets really hot. Most charcoal filters can be hand-washed and reused before they’re replaced.

Skip the bag liner. Some bins are designed to hold a compostable liner. But you don’t need to line your kitchen food-scrap bin with anything.

Waste less, stink less. The best way to manage your kitchen compost collection is by collecting less of it. The less you throw away, the less moisture and sugar in your bin that can make a great habitat for mold and unpleasant odors to bloom. We have lots of tips for how to cut down on your food waste.

The Oggi (a former staff-favorite), Enloy, and Epica stainless steel bins were nearly identical in size, performance, and smell tests to the Package Free Compost Bin Container we recommend. But they were all more expensive or didn’t function quite as well. That said, any of these will serve you about the same and last for years.

We liked the look of the Bamboozle Compost Bin and Lalastar Compostable Bin, both made of bamboo, but at about $40 each, we found them overpriced for their size. We were also concerned about their durability, and in our experience this material is frustrating to keep clean over time.

The 2.5-gallon TerraCycle Compost Bin is composed of 50% recycled plastic (a percentage of which, TerraCycle claims, comes from TerraCycle’s reclamation program). We’d prefer if the hinged lid was fully removable for easier cleaning, but at about $20, it may be a fine option. We did not order it in time for this round of testing.

We tested the plastic Lalastar Hanging Compost Bin in the 1.8-gallon version. The 1.75-gallon OXO compost bin has a better design, but if you are looking for something that you can mount to a cabinet and commit to emptying frequently, this is a fine option.

We tested the 3-gallon Brabantia Sort & Go Recycling Trash Can. While we liked the compact design and found it to be an ideal size, its lack of a tight seal lets out odors and makes it vulnerable to leaking during transport.

We were intrigued by the 1-gallon Simplehuman Compost Caddy. But on closer inspection, we decided not to test the caddy, since in our experience, the narrow proportion would prove messy (a hypothesis reflected in several reviews). At nearly $50, it’s also far more expensive than our picks.

We were momentarily starstruck by the 1-gallon Emile Henry Compost Bin, which is made from French ceramic and comes with a 10-year warranty. However, it costs about $150 and weighs more than 8 pounds without being filled.

Anna Perling contributed reporting to an older version of this guide. This article was edited by Marilyn Ong and Christine Cyr Clisset.