Indoor Electric Composter - Made in Japan

A photo of the composter from Hitachi (Hitachi BGD-V18 Kitchen Magic)

This past week, Ken bought me the neatest new 'toy'. It's a composter. I have wanted a composter for a while, not having much space out in the garden for a pile, I have been looking for a good small barrel that could be turned easily. I was not that enthusiatic though since outdoor compost piles or containers can be pretty icky and attract unwanted 'visitors' (such as cockroaches and rats). That might not be such a big deal if you have a large yard and can place it far from the house. However, probably because most people in Japan have small or no gardens, here in Japan, they have made the ultimate electronic composter that can be used indoors or on your apartment's balcony! Several companies make one, Hitachi, National (Panasonic), etc. We got the Hitachi BGC-V18 model from Amazon Japan (and it arrived at our door less than 24 hours after placing the order!). I used it last night for the first time. I think this is a great machine!

First of all, it is nearly silent! Unbelievably quiet, I can only hear this or that being turned around inside. Last night I'd put some bits of a corn cob in there and I suspect those were responsible for most of the sounds I heard.

Second, it doesn't generate heat around it like I thought it might. The casing of the machine itself gets fairly warm to the touch, mostly on the back of the machine, but that is it.

Thirdly, it composted the things I'd put into it in only 4 hours and without any smell.

All this and it has a very minimal footprint!

Supposedly, it uses only a few pennies in electricity to run a full course (something like around 50 US cents/50 JP yen a month), which is drastically less than it ends up costing (in money and in the affects to the environment) to throw the material to be composed into the garbage/landfill instead. Because of this, our city will give us some money towards the purchase of this machine once we fill out a form they have. They pay for 1/3 of the cost of the machine. Pretty neato huh?

I am looking forward to seeing how my garden responds to the composted material this summer.

UPDATE June 21, 2009:

Well we have been using this composter for a year now. I really love it. There is some noise once in a while such as a squeak or tumbling sound, but hardly noticeable. I think it depends on what matter is being composted. There can be a slight smell when you open the lid to add things, but it is not repulsive. It smells something like burnt coffee in the bottom of the coffee pot (when someone has forgotten to turn off the coffeemaker). Again, it's not a horrible smell but I do try to pop the items into the machine all at once and close the lid quickly because my husband likes to comment that it's stinky. The final composted material works great in my garden and it seems my tomatoes this year are benefiting from it so far! What is really great is you can take out alittle compost at a time (after the machine has run it's approximately 4 hour cycle). You don't need to wait longer than even one day to use some of the compost, on the other hand, if you prefer, you don't have to use any of it for quite a while (in our 2 person household), just keep adding the matter to be composted and let it run a cycle, and on and on. I did empty all the compost out and give the inside a full cleaning about a month ago. I then had to add a new starter bag of compost accelerator. Very simple and easy.
Seems like these type of composters are STILL not available outside Japan. What a shame! I'm sure they would be wildly popular in the USA as well as many other places. Get smart Hitachi, Panasonic...start making these for the overseas market!!!

Here are some pics.

Here is the machine parked in our kitchen, next to the refrigerator.

The control panel on the top is easy for me to use even though it's in Japanese. Ken helped me with some translation which I have written on the protective plastic covering that it came with. I think I can memorize pretty quickly and remove the plastic and notes later on.

View of the inside after I had run the machine once. In 4 hours the corn cob, lemon peels, cuttings from the garden and other kitchen compostible wastes I put in, have turned into what you see here. The paddles turn around so quietly I hardly knew the machine was on.

Another picture from Hitachi showing how, once you open the front panel, you can have the machine expel the finished compost easily into a bucket.