Breville The Food Cycler

Food Cycler Non-Stick Enamel Separation Issue – I’ve been using the Breville Food Cycler for almost 18 months now and do find it to be a good product. Average use is once per week. When using fiberous materials like banana peel, the resulting compost does tend to stick annoyingly to the bucket but filling the bucket with hot water and allowing to sit a while does help with the cleaning process.… Read more

The one major issue I do have with the product is the non-stick enamel separating from the bucket which started after only the first use when I noticed what looked like some minor chipping. I had no hard or sharp objects being composted just fruit peel and leafy vegetable so nothing could have caused this damage. After almost 18 months of use essentially composting the same fruit and vegetable by product for use in my NutriBullet including the occasional egg shells, this separation of the non-stick enamel has continued to deteriorate quite badly and does cause the resulting compost to stick quite badly on these areas. But as mentioned already, allowing the bucket to soak with hot water does assist with loosening the material but it is very annoying. I did email Breville a photo after this first use showing the enamel separating as I wasn’t sure if this was normal or maybe it was a faulty bucket, but received no response so didn’t bother following up given the unit was composting correctly. But it still would have been nice getting some acknowledgment from Breville but is what it is. Another minor issue are the filters that contain the activated carbon pellets. These should be reusable and it makes no sense that a product made to reduce landfill requires these plastic filters to be replaced every few months. These should be re-usable!! There are workarounds to refill and so re-use these filters but consumers should not have to resort to researching alternatives on YouTube so maybe Breville should re-think the design of these filters.

A great cycler with a few creaks – Owned the Food Cycler just shy of two years now. It has been a workhorse and main stay in the house for those two years. The gist of this is: put 'most' of your food scraps into the bin and some hours later: presto you have a compost like result. There are pros for this for apartments and those living in tighter accommodation where a standard… Read more

compost bin is either too big or confronting. There are trade offs and consumables you need to cater for when investing (noting it is now discontinued).

Pros: - turns most soft and medium firmness food scraps into a compost-like material - runs well by itself and uses low-ish power consumption - saves space

Cons: - the compost cannot be used immediately; the manual caveats it needs 3mnths further before being used to grow food (so only for aesthetic gardens) - has consumables: the air filters, these are not inexpensive - prone to jamming with egg shells (residue cooks off with the heat and makes a binding paste) - when jammed to try to remove the stuck arm and residue is an exercise in patience and anger management - cannot deal with any form of bones - most food scraps work best in small chunks - very limited volume - if the air filters are more than 1 week old you get a lovely sulphuric smell - the grinding is not quiet, I run this in the garage to hide the noise - can run from 3 hours to more than 8 hours - gets stuck and sits there with the fans on until you come help it out - reset cycle can be a pain to play with

The Food Cycler is nearly a daily run at our household due to the volume the machine can take. With the requirement to have the compost sit for 3months prior to use with growing food makes it a little impractical for those wanting to add this to your vegetable gardens. The power usage is low but it does add up when you have dropped $200AUD+ on the unit and consumables. However it is nice to not have a smelly or insect riddled compost box in the backyard.

Top Tip: coffee grounds are the one of the best additives. With 2 or more pucks and it assist in preventing the grinding getting stuck.

Works great... but environmental vandalism – I'm in two minds about this... if I didn't care about the environment, I'd give it a 4. If it's all I cared about, I'd rate it negative stars. On the plus side, our bin has never been emptier or cleaner. No bad smells, and we are producing about half the rubbish we were before. On that count, I'd call it a massive win. In terms of operations,… Read more

it's good but not perfect. Despite the filters, it still creates an unpleasant smell if left in the kitchen. Towards the end of the filter life, I would describe it as very unpleasant, whereas near the start, it's simply noticeable. It jams maybe one time in five or so, requiring a screwdriver and a good 10-15 minutes of patient and pretty unpleasant clearing of the blockage. But it would be forgiveable, if not for my other complaint: It's environmentally destructive.

We did the maths before we bought, and it seemed that its power consumption wasn't too bad. However, several things changed our mind on this.

(1) For a family of 2 adults and 2 kids, we need to run 2 loads per day. This means the power consumption is double what we expected. If we have guests over, we can be running the unit nearly 24x7 for a few days to catch up. As many other reviewers have noted, the capacity is small. It's also deceptive. The "max fill" line is only about 3/4 of the bucket volume, and if you try to fill past this line or compact the food scraps, it almost guarantees a jam.

(2) The estimated run time of 4-8 hours is wildly optimistic. I've never had a load run for 4, and 8 is the minimum. In winter, especially when humid, the run time can easily be 12 hours, and if you put watery food waste like watermelon rinds and apple cores in there, 16 has not been out of the question. This is understandable, as when it's cold and humid, you need a lot more time and energy to dry out the waste so it can be ground, but it also still means you are consuming huge amounts of power to run this.

Between the much higher electricity consumption and the much more frequent replacement of filters than expected, I can only feel I am being environmentally destructive by using this. I feel bad giving it away, or just binning it as waste, so my compromise is to only run it while I am generating solar power, and leaving it outside with no filter. Neighbours have made comment, but not really complained.

Overall, I would not recommend the Breville Foodcycler. The concept is great, but the execution is poor. Perhaps if it were much larger, and used unheated air to dry it, then very long cycles wouldn't matter so much as you could put several days of food waste in there in one go. As it is, it's green washing. Lets people feel good about the environment... until they do the calculations.

Wow I totally disagree! – I found this product expensive to purchase, noisy (thus we use it in the garage) smelly (thus we use it in the garage) and takes hours to operate (using electricity all the while). It regularly jams and can take days of soaking and probing to get it functioning again. It has a tiny capacity and don’t think it has anything to do with composting. It… Read more

is basically a chopper and dehydrater. The appliance is very fussy about the kinds of waste it can handle and the resulting product it produces can vary enormously from like chaff to like porridge. It requires expensive non recyclable filters that you have to buy from the manufacturer. All together it rates as the most disappointing appliance I have ever bought. To pretend that it does anything for the environment is grossly inaccurate.

It's made a real impact on our waste – I bought the Food Cycler from Breville because now that we are working remotely, we are eating all our meals at home and we were emptying our rubbish bin every day. I wasn't sure it would make a difference, but wow, has it! We went from emptying the bin daily to maybe only 1-2x a week. I can't believe how much food waste we were creating. It's… Read more

really easy to use and I put it on at night a couple of times a week. I sits in my laundry and I don't hear it running or smell it so, that's a good thing. After using, there is just some dried bits remaining that take up very little space in my bin. I recently saw the Choice review and I don't agree. I live in an apartment with no balcony so composting isn't a real option. Doing this makes me feel good about my choices without really have to do too much.

Greatest product – I have had my foodcycler for a couple of weeks now. I must say it is the best money I have spent on appliances. I have been a compost failure in many ways to wet to dry and never reaching the potential of good compost. My compost bin was always full so good intentions turned out bad. Now with this new machine I can turn all my food waste into… Read more

compost quick and easy. No more food scrapes going to land fill. The machine itself is easy to use. Fill the bucket to the line put it in the machine turn it on and wait a few hours. A few times I have had to soak the bucket but for the ease and convenience it is wonderful.

Love it, no more smelly compost! – I have been composting for the last couple of years but was becoming frustrated with the smell and length of time it takes to create garden-ready compost. Our family of 5 also had an excess of food waste that I had to take to community gardens to dispose of in their compost bins as ours were full. This product eliminates both of the above… Read more

problems. The Breville Foodcycler is life changing. I keep a small compost tub on my kitchen bench and then transfer into the Foodcycler when it's getting full. Turn it on and a few hours later I have garden-ready compost due to the Foodcycler's method of drying, grinding and cooling the food waste. It essentially converts 3 months of old fashioned composting into a few hours. I love it. The only negatives are the price ($499 and replacement filters $40), the bucket is a bit small so I regularly use it twice a day, and the metal panel on the inside of the bucket gets compost stuck to it after a cycle that's hard to remove without soaking in hot soapy water. Overall it's a fantastic product though, and I highly recommend.