The Scoop on Food Scrap Dehydrators

Are Food Scrap Dehydrators the Same as Composting? No.

While electric food waste recyclers are popping up in more kitchens as a way to shrink down smelly food waste, food scrap dehydrators are not the same as composting. You may have seen popular models like Foodcycler or Lomi advertised as “counter-top composters.” Many of these electric devices are dehydrators which heat and grind your leftovers into a dry, lightweight powder, and sound like a great way to reduce waste—so what’s the catch?

The short answer: the powdery byproduct isn’t compost.

The Difference Between Dehydration & Composting

Compost is a rich, soil-like material made through a natural decomposition process. Compost forms when organic materials like food and yard waste break down slowly over weeks or months with the help of oxygen and billions of naturally occurring microbes. This carbon-neutral process stabilizes the materials, reduces pathogens, and creates a nutrient-rich substance that has a range of benefits, most notably helping plants thrive.

Many food waste dehydrators are advertised as silver-bullet composting solutions, but dried food waste is not compost. Dehydrators use electricity to generate high heat (165°–275°F) to remove moisture in 4 to 20 hours. While this reduces the volume of your food waste by 80% to 90%, it doesn’t biologically break it down. The end result may look like compost, but it lacks the microbial life, stability, safety, and nutrients that true compost offers. Furthermore, depending on how your electricity is generated, your dehydrator may contribute to the production of greenhouse gas emissions.

Putting dehydrated food waste straight into your garden can harm plants and attract animals and pests. Interestingly, in a simple indoor vector attraction test, a domestic dog readily consumed dry dehydrated food while ignoring actual compost. Studies have shown that seeds often won’t sprout in soil mixed with dehydrated scraps. The high salt and chloride content, low moisture and pH, high electrical conductivity, and lack of microbial breakdown can make it an unfriendly environment for both plants and soil life. When moisture is added, it can grow mold, revive pathogens, attract rodents and insects, cause very offensive odors, and even kill some plants.

The high temperatures used in dehydration units and loss of moisture work to essentially eradicate beneficial microbial life in the material so, in order to become biologically stable, the microbes must be repopulated. Some technologies suggest adding microbe or enzyme packages to the material being dehydrated. However, it is not realistic to believe that added microbes are effective at accelerating biological degradation and stabilization, as they are attempting to survive in the hostile environment created within these devices, i.e., high temperatures and low moisture content. Further, adding a small amount of enzymes for a treatment period of 4 to 20 hours is unlikely to significantly affect biological degradation.

Food Waste: A Big Problem

Food waste is a major issue that affects the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit.

Planet: In Michigan alone, 38% of what we send to landfills is organic material like food, yard waste, wood and paper. When this waste breaks down in a landfill, it degrades anaerobically—it rots without oxygen— producing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
Profit: Nationally, food waste costs each consumer an estimated $728 per year or $2,913 for a household of four. Even more money is lost via the resources—water, energy, labor, land use, and fertilizer—it took to grow that wasted food.
People: More than 13% of Michiganders are experiencing food insecurity while close to 40% of food will be lost or wasted. Recovering and rescuing edible food, converting food waste into soil amendments to grow nutritious food, or using food scraps as animal feed, can help bridge that gap.

These systemic problems, caused by our disconnect to our food systems and our collective habit of throwing things “away,” are tough, but not impossible, to transform. Your response to the problem of food scrap management matters.

After Food Waste Prevention and Food Rescue, Composting is the Better Solution (With Time)

If you want to save money or avert the biggest environmental impacts, then working to prevent waste in the first place is your best option. Behind reducing wasted food and eating up leftovers though, composting is a terrific solution for diverting organic waste headed to landfills. But it requires time, space, and a little know-how. Not everyone has access to curbside compost pickup, and rural geographies as well as cold climates can make outdoor composting tricky.

That’s where dehydrators may offer some benefit. By reducing the volume and smell of food waste, they can make it easier to store and move scraps for later composting or for someone who can use it as animal feed.

Are Dehydrators Useless?

Not at all. These machines can be a helpful tool in the right context:

If you can’t compost on your own and don’t have a local composting program, dehydrating your food waste can make it easier to store and transport it to an eventual food scrap recycling drop-off. In cold climates, you can dry scraps during winter and compost them later.
Try to get your dehydrated material to someone who can use it as animal feed. After waste prevention and rescuing good food for people to eat, the next most climate-impactful solution is reducing the need to grow food for animals. If you don’t have access to a local farmer who can use these scraps, some dehydrator companies such as Mill allow you to send the dried waste back to them to be used as animal feed. This is a great option if you live in a place where there is significant pest or predator pressure on having compost piles.

Bottom Line

First, remember: dehydrators don’t make compost. The labeling on some of these products can be misleading, and using them improperly can actually create more problems than solutions.

Second, although at-home dehydrators do not use a lot of energy (only about 1 kWh per cycle), we must consider the device’s whole lifecycle. These units have to be made, packaged, shipped and eventually discarded. Also, some brands suggest regular (every 6 months) replacement of expensive charcoal filters, producing more waste.

Third, food dehydrators offer convenience, but they’re not a silver bullet. They don’t magically turn food waste into compost—they just dry it out. If used thoughtfully, they can be part of a waste reduction strategy, especially for people with limited composting options. But they’re no replacement for real composting, and marketing them as such can confuse consumers and hurt efforts to promote sustainable waste solutions.

Finally, think of dehydrators as a pre-step—not the final step—in turning food waste into something useful.

Want to learn more about how you can get involved with food waste solutions? Click here!

References
Alexander, Ron. 2023. Electric Kitchen “Composter” Confusion. BioCycle.

Brown, S. 2023. Connections: What is NOT Compost. BioCycle.

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. 2025. Facebook.

Odyssey Writing Staff. 2026. We Reviewed the 4 Most Popular Home Compost Machines – Here’s how they stacked up. Green Thumb Reviews: Composting.

Pavlis, R. Electric Composters – An Eco Win or Unnecessary Appliance?

Power Knot. 2022. The pros and cons of dehydrating food waste.

Resource Recycling Systems. 2022. Market Assessment for Organics Diversion through Reduction, Reuse and Recycling in NW Lower MI. Final Report for SEEDS Ecology and Education Centers.

SEEDS Ecology and Education Centers. Composting for the Future.

Smithline, S. What do food recyclers actually do, and why do they matter? Mill Blog, Guides.

Spinks, R. 2023. The Problem With Those Kitchen Composting Machines. Sierra.