The LUMA Composter is a countertop appliance suitable for your kitchen that you can use to compost your leftovers and food scraps with. The 2.5L capacity lets you regularly fill up and process your waste into material you can use as compost for your plants. Newair states that the unit will take 3-6 months of compost time and reduce that down to 3-6 hours. Lets take a closer look.
Specs
Features a 2.5L capacity, 10″L x 14.5″W x 13.8″H and weighs 17.9 lbs. Comes in any color you like, as long as it’s black. Comes with 2x carbon filters; 1x pre-installed and 1x replacement to soak up the smell. Life span of the carbon filter is 6 months. The Luma is a 500 watt unit 120v.
What is compost?
Compost is decaying organic material like leftover food, grass, leaves etc that is rich in nutrients and used for fertilizer in soil for plants. Whether you’ve got that farmers instinct or maybe you just like to grow some veggies in your garden you’re probably already savvy to the benefits of composting.
Microorganisms break down organic materials with the help of a bit of oxygen. Not only does it enrich your soil, improve your plants health and growth it will also cut down on the volume of waste you’re tossing out into landfills.
Newair has provided us with the Luma Kitchen Composter so that we could provide hands on review coverage of the unit and our personal experiences with it to our readers. Our reviews are for educational and informational purposes only.
How to Use the Luma Composter
You can use the bucket and simply drop things in as you gather them. Some people plop it right in, others keep it off to the side and when you have enough for a bucket then fill her up and turn on the unit.
While we tend to stay away from overly messy foods, the Luma Composter removes the moisture and grinds it all down to granular material. Luma states that the unit will take 3-6 months of compost time and reduce that down to 3-6 hours.
The process
Once you fill up the bucket of your material and touch the on/off button, the panel lights up the led for the stage it is currently in. The unit goes through heating and drying, grinding, then cooling so it’s important to try and let it runs its course.
Although it is possible to toss things into the bucket mid way through, they may not have enough time to complete process leaving some moisture in there which could ultimately leave you with mold so it is best not to try and add things in during the process when possible.
First the unit will dry the material, typically this stage takes about 70 min give or take depending on how much moisture is present in your material.
Once the drying has completed, the unit will begin to grind and can take up to 5hrs to complete the grinding stage.
Last is the cooling stage, this takes just 10 minutes and an audible beep alerts you that the process has completed.
The full function didn’t always take that long, in some of our lighter buckets, the unit seemed to complete the the 3 stages in a couple hours.
What Can I put in?
Fruits, vegetables, shellfish, dairy/cheese, legumes, fish bones, tea bags, meat scraps, nuts and seeds, weeds and foliage.
In limited amounts: Fibrous produce, napkins, starch, sugar-rich fruit, butters and spreads, honey, natural fabrics, whole corn, sauces and jams.
What Can’t I put in?
Hardwood, cooking oil, hard fruit cores, hard fruit shells, synthetic fibers, plastic, large bones, metals, candy and gum.
Does it work?
The Newair Luma Composter is able to process the food and material waste you place in it through heated drying, grinding, cooling. What you end up with is a dried granular material that is approx 90% of it’s original volume.
Compost is like yogurt in that there is activity going on in there, microorganisms in this case that are breaking down and decomposing the food so that it turns into nutrient rich material that you can then add back to your soil to enhance your growing. Anyone who survives on their grown food will attest that fertilizer to enrich the soil is absolutely necessary for great crops.
While the Luma Composter does not create matured compost, it does create material that you can use to create compost. So yes and no from what we can see. What the Luma Electric Composter can do is to help you prep your material, but you’ll still have to mature it before you can really call it compost. You can use it to add to and enrich your soil, but it may not be as effective as matured compost.
Ultimately you can add this to a worm farm aka Vermicomposting and let nature’s creatures create the mature compost for you. This is probably the most efficient way with the least amount of work.
While we are not scientists, farmers or chemists, but it would seem that compost needs to be matured; like yogurt has biological activity going on in there. The Luma or any other countertop composter that uses a similar process might kill any active bacteria thus theoretically killing your compost.
Still, composting (like a hot compost pile) naturally generates heat during the maturing process that can reach upwards of 104 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference is that there are live bacteria that are breaking down the food material that is creating the heat vs just applying heat and drying it out. Mature compost will be moist but must be tended to regularly or it can rot.
Pros
- Drys and grinds up food waste to make into granular material ready for composting
- Reduces volume of material by up to 90% of it’s original mass
- Convenient countertop unit
- Comes with Lid and Carbon filter to reduce smell
Cons
- Uses a good amount of electricity 3-6hrs of usage at 500watts
- Doesn’t necessarily make matured compost
- Can be slightly noisy in a quiet room
- Smells can waft and find their way through the home
Our Experience
Aesthetically the unit is suitable for the kitchen with a polished looking design and elegant finish. The footprint is a bit large but it doesn’t necessarily need to reside on your kitchen countertop. You can easily find a home for this on the floor nearby, table in the basement or garage, shed provided you have power.
The collecting process can be somewhat cumbersome for some as you’ll need to collect it somewhere or in the LUMA bucket itself where it can certainly waft smells; and if you forget for a few days, say hello to mold. But if you’re already of the composting mindset this may not be a problem for you since the ritual is probably already ingrained into your daily routine.
The noise level is relatively quiet in some stages but also can reach up to 55db which can be pretty distracting.
The bucket is on the small side but this is probably a good thing as you don’t want the food waste to take so long to fill up that it creates mold while sitting around.
That’s a wrap
The Newair Luma 2.5L Composter is an aesthetically pleasing countertop unit that will conveniently reduce your food waste by 90% volume, making compost ready material for you.
$399.99 Newair Luma 2.5L Electric Food Waste Composter LFC025BK00
www.newair.com
United States Environmental Protection Agency, updated 10/24/24:
https://www.epa.gov/recycle/composting-home#whatcom
