Is a compost bin the right system for you?

If you’re trying to decide what to do with food waste and garden waste at home, you’re not alone. In most areas these are treated as separate waste streams, with different collection systems, rules, and costs to households. Councils may offer food‑waste caddies, green‑waste collections, or chargeable garden‑waste schemes — while general waste disposal remains the fallback option for everything else.

Alongside these services, some households choose to manage organic material at home.

This page is an orientation guide. Its purpose is to help you decide whether home composting makes sense for you at all, and if it does, whether a compost bin is the right approach. Only after that does it narrow the focus to the different types of compost bin systems.

The main composting systems you’ll encounter

1. Compost bins (the focus of this site)

Compost bins are designed to shape conditions that may support natural aerobic decomposition outdoors. Micro‑organisms break down garden and kitchen materials using oxygen, moisture, and time. As the process progresses, heat may be generated, depending on conditions, helping convert organic inputs into a useful soil improver (compost).

Here, compost is a broad term covering several material fractions and stages, rather than a single uniform product — see the HealthySoil definitions for how compost is defined and classified.

What goes in

Garden waste (leaves, prunings, grass clippings)
Kitchen peelings and food scraps (within reason)
Bulking materials like wood chips or coarse biochar granules, where suitable

What comes out

A heterogeneous compost material suitable for use in gardens and beds

Why this option suits many households

Can produce usable compost under normal conditions
Handles mixed household and garden waste
Reduces reliance on external collections
Works outdoors with minimal energy input

Ambient composting bins

Most compost bins used in the UK operate at or near ambient outdoor temperatures for much of their working life. Decomposition still occurs, but it proceeds gradually and unevenly, influenced by weather, moisture balance, and material mix.

Ambient composting bins:

Rely on time rather than sustained heat
Are tolerant of variable inputs
Suit households willing to compost steadily over months rather than weeks

Hot and insulated composting bins

Some compost bins are designed to retain heat through insulation and controlled airflow. Under the right conditions, these systems can support hotter composting phases for longer periods.

Hot or insulated composting bins:

Aim to reduce heat loss rather than create heat directly
Can process material more quickly in some situations under favourable conditions
Require more attention to moisture, structure, and input balance

Both ambient and hot composting bins remain compost bins — they differ in how conditions are managed, not in the underlying biological process.

This is the system Compost‑Bins.co.uk is built around.

2. Wormeries (vermicomposting)

Wormeries use composting worms to process food waste at low temperatures.

They are often described as composting systems, but they operate very differently from compost bins.

Key characteristics

Cool, biological digestion rather than hot microbial breakdown
High sensitivity to feeding balance, moisture, and temperature
Limited capacity compared to compost bins

Output

Worm castings (a concentrated soil amendment)
Liquid leachate, often misunderstood as fertiliser

Why we set them aside
Wormeries can work well in specific situations, such as flats or very small gardens focused on food waste. However, they:

Do not handle garden waste
Do not produce compost in the conventional sense
Require ongoing management and careful control

For most households with gardens, they are a specialist option rather than a general solution.

3. Bokashi systems

Bokashi is frequently described as composting, but technically it is not.

It uses fermentation (anaerobic digestion) rather than decomposition. Food waste is treated with microbes in an airtight container, producing a preserved material rather than compost.

What actually happens

Food waste is pickled, not broken down
No heat is generated
The material must still be buried or composted afterwards

Why it’s not a standalone composting system

Produces no usable compost on its own
Simply shifts the process to a later stage
Works only as a pre‑treatment step

4. Kitchen dehydrators and “electric composters”

These countertop machines are increasingly marketed as composters, but the description is misleading.

What they actually do

Heat and dry food waste
Reduce volume and odour
Produce a dry, largely biologically inactive residue

Why they are not composters

While some units may briefly reach high temperatures, they do not maintain the moisture, oxygen balance, and time required for sustained thermophilic composting
Any microbial activity is incidental rather than process‑driving
The material is dried or sterilised faster than biological decomposition can occur

The output still needs disposal or further processing, often in a compost bin or soil. These devices are best understood as waste processors, not composting systems.

Why this site focuses on compost bins

Compost bins sit at the intersection of:

Natural biological processes
Practical household use
Meaningful soil inputs and soil support

They are forgiving, scalable, low‑energy, and, when well designed, highly effective. While other systems have niche roles, compost bins remain the most robust and versatile way for households to make compost.

Summary

Many systems are labelled “composting”, but only a few genuinely create compost. Wormeries, bokashi, and electric units can all play niche roles, but for most households, a well‑designed compost bin remains the simplest and most reliable way to turn waste into compost for use in soil.

Compost-Bins.co.uk