When we heard about the Lomi home composting machine, we just wanted to try it out for ourselves. It’s great for the environment if you compost your own food and this little wonder makes it super easy.
The people behind the Lomi home composting machine are also the inventors of the first biodegradable phone case by Pela. They now have now created a great home composter that can even take care of your old compost-able mobile phone covers.
The Idea Behind Lomi Home Composting Machine
The idea behind this neat invention is to help cut your carbon footprint by up to half. You can achieve this by recycling as much as you can at home, composting as you go, then using it in your own garden. If you can grow your own vegetables using your composted material, then put waste from those vegtables back into your Lomi home composting machine, that’s even better.
Don’t waste your time or energy sending your food waste to a landfill. All that does is take resources to transport it then stuff it into a big hole where it’ll sit with plastics which take thousands of years to degrade.
Energy Consumption
But then what about the energy consumption needed to compost your own food waste? How about running it on green energy from a wind farm so it’s composting on 100% green energy. That’s a super plus point to composting your own food waste.
Other sources that have tested the Lomi home composting machine over a reasonable period of time to build up some data have also said their electricity bill didn’t see a huge jump from using the Lomi home composting machine regularly. We’ve never had any other composting machines before, so have nothing to compare Lomi to, but others have said it’s a positive when compared with older models.
Daily Use
You actually don’t need to run this everyday, unless you have a family of elephants. Plus, you’re already efficient with our food, right? So that’s once every two to three days you need to use this wonderful device because it has enough capacity at 3 litres, but more on that later.
For us, the advertisement videos we first saw on YouTube for Lomi home composting machine were especially designed for the everyday person, not the environmentally concious. The ads were aimed at people that would throw enough ‘waste’ into Lomi home composting machine that could feed a family. Stuff they allowed to go bad and didn’t eat for like who knows how long? That makes total sense because we need to get this technology into the hands of as many people as possible.
What we’re trying to say is we’re confident that if you’re already reducing your food waste and definitely if you’re a single person, you won’t need to run it every day and when you do run it, turning your Lomi on overnight will allow you to keep using it the next morning or refill it again in the evening depending on the mode you use.
Lomi Modes
Lomi home composting machine has three different modes you can use to make compost.
- Eco-Express Mode
- Lomi Approved Mode
- Grow Mode
Eco-Express mode is the one we would use most at first because it’s quick and easy to use, making okay looking dirt. You can then add this to your regular compost heap to finish decomposing into compost. Another option would be to add more waste material when the cycle is over and run it again, or you could leave it in and start a full Grow cycle (explained below).
Lomi Approved Mode is for decomposing bioplastics like biodegradable mobile phone cases. there are quite a few things now being produced that are that are biodegradable and you can get the process started yourself at home.
The final, most powerful mode is called Grow and took us about 17 hours when we tried it. This Grow mode is the true composting mode that gives you ready-to-use compost for your flowerbeds.
If you put it on last thing at night, say at 10 or 11pm, then you can empty it and re-fill it to start again at around the same time. Grow is the mode we started to use regularly once every three days, sometimes once every other day. Unfortunately, we don’t have a garden, but could give the soil to neighbours of our family to use in their garden.
If you need to make use of your Lomi home composting machine during the day, the Eco-Express setting is the fastest mode it has to offer and finises in just 3-6 hours, so you could put it on in the morning before work, or on the weekend before you go shopping.
We found the CNET YouTube video gave a good explanation of how the device works and might be more accurate to how a regular person interested in saving the environment might use it.
What can you put in your Lomi?
Don’t put in any pits from your fruits, paper type products or liquids. Definitely not anything that isn’t organic either. I mean why would you try and compost regular plastic, which takes thousands of years to decompose anyway? Just be sensible and stick to fruit and veg, even scraps of meat from your meal’s remains you’d put in your garden to compost and you’ll be fine.
Lomi’s website has a list of things you can put in it, but we didn’t want to push it too far and so from their list, this is what we would add:
- Frit and veg
- Apple cores
- Lettuce
- Cabbage
- Beans
- etc.
- Scraps of meat
- Breadcrumbs
- Left over cereal
- Small fish bones
- Teabags
- Flowers
All things added should be cut up into smaller pieces as much as possible, like old flowers and teabags opened up. Also plate scrapings can be added, but that’s included in the above since there will be a lot of bits of cabbage or baked beans and meat scraps left on the plate. Our use would be limited to just food products and we wouldn’t bother with things like paper and cardboard which should be recycled with your regular recycling anyway. There’s absolutely no need to add that stuff to your Lomi.
Lomi Capacity
With a capacity of 3 litres, you will be able to run your Lomi home composting machine once every two or three days, though Lomi recommend only filling it to just over 2.2 litres. We probably filled it almost to the top consistently and had no issues. We wouldn’t recommend stuffing it full, because that’s certainly not what w’d do, nor would we do that with any other type of waste disposal or recycling.
So you only need to run it once every 3 days if you’re efficient and don’t have a family. Of course there’s the potential for foul smells to escape, but then when you run it, there’s apparently no odour, just weird sounds. We don’t think there would be any issues with leaving it for a few days at a time, usually running it once a week. Your Lomi should only be used where you have ventilation because it does seem to expel quite a bit of air during the composting process.
In addition, make sure you break things into smaller pieces. It’s logical that it will take less time to become compost and the secret trick we’d like to share with you is that it actually increases the amount you can put in your unit. Simply because by putting in smaller pieces, it’ll be easier to fit more inside because more volume is taken up by your waste instead of air. Just be sure to leave some space at the top. The Lomi website also tells users that smaller pieces reduces the load on the uni as it can work faster.
Lomi Price
On the UK version of their site, a Lomi home composting machine costs £499, but you get to try it out for two weeks and can send it back for a full refund in that time. You firstly pay a 50 quid deposit to order the machine, then when it arrives, you pay the balance. On the Lomi website, they have staggered delivery and are sold out for August, almost all sold out for September, then not yet displaying availability in October.
Thing is, the availability displayed also says October delivery ‘opens June 30’, so they’re not really updating that page. Their US page, however, is totally up-to-date with a delivery ‘closes July 25th’ (which is today as this is published) notification on their sales page.
Lomi Sales Pitch
We noticed some differences between the American website and the British website in respect of the offers they have. Here in the UK, “Limited Time 2 Week Home Trial” is what they run with, continuing “Risk Free. Full Refund. If you don’t love your Lomi within the first 14 days of using it, we’ll give you your money back.”
In the US, it’s a “1 Year Happiness Guarantee”, we guess because Americans are sceptical about anything that could possible help save the environment?
“If you have any issues at all with your Lomi in the first year, we will repair or replace your Lomi at no cost.”
Looks like we’re more environmentally friendly in the UK and willing to give technology like this a go? Whatever the case, they’re offering slightly better perks as a consumer in their home country than they are abroad. That does tell us they’re confident their product works since a year is a reasonably long time, but maybe actually getting environmentally friendly technology into American homes is a tricky business?
Should you buy a Lomi home compacting machine?
Lomi is a great option to choose for a composting machine, especially as you can keep it in your kitchen if you’re short of space. It will certainly help reduce the amount of food waste being carted off to the local tip, reducing rubbish in landfills.
They also have an app which is designed to help you get more out of your Lomi, but we have a dedicated page where you can learn more about Lomi’s environmentally friendly clean app and others that made it onto the list.
We think giving Lomi home composting machine a try is a really good idea. Since you can send it back in the first two weeks, that’s even more of an incentive, though UK users who take that offer up may not get free repairs or a replacement model in the first year like US buyers do.
We recommend you now take a look at the best in-depth Lomi home composting machine review to really understand how this machine stacks up.