Vitamix FC-50 - Convenient Home Food Processor and Recycler - Kitchen Countertop Compost Bin Alternative - Electric Waste Disposer - Odorless Garbage Disposal - 2.5L Capacity

I haven’t had this really long. Now my husband and I are empty nesters, when I throw scraps in the garbage, they sit there longer than when our kids lived here. Didn’t want to spend $400 but when it went on sale 1/2 price, I bought it.There’s a bucket to hold the scraps and while you’re collecting them, there is an odor stopping lid to put on the bucket. You use a different lid to do the composting.I’ve composted maybe 6 buckets. It takes awhile to do this but it’s fine with me. You just press the start button and it does the rest. It dehydrates, then grinds, then cools. I think the bucket holds about 4 cups, but the end result is maybe 1/3 cup. I just throw this into my veggie garden.In the past I would use veggie scraps for broth, but I cannot use that much broth as I don’t cook as much as when the kids lived at home.Highly recommend.Update: 11/25/2024I've now had this for about 3 months and still love it. I love it even more. I juice lots of organic celery with my son and husband (nearly 2 cases) at a time to help me manage Type 2 diabetes. Because it's so much celery, we use a centrifugal juicer for the celery, as this does it much faster than a masticating juicer. However, there is greater waste with the pulp. My son runs the pulp through the juicer afterwards to get us more juice.When I cut the heads off each bunch, I usually toss. Normal composting takes too long. And there was a season, I replanted these heads, but it was so much work to grow them into bunches of celery. But with the Vitamix, I cut the heads into smaller pieces and put these in the bucket. It takes about 5 buckets and 2 days to do all the composting for 50 bunches. It's really quite fascinating to me to have the bucket filled to the line and when it's all done, just this little bit of compost.I've also composted fruit that's gone bad, or lemons from our tree that don't make it into the juicer, or leaves from my houseplants that have fallen off. Once I composted the bones of chicken wings, but normally it's vegetable scraps and leaves, periodically fruit stuff.Even the Black Friday deal on this isn't as good as the deal I got a few months ago at half price.The bucket is really easy to clean. I do this by hand. I have yet to replace the filter, but it should tell me when I need to do this. Depending on what you compost, this could take quite a few hours. The wetter your ingredients in the bucket, the longer it will take.If you have LOTS of scraps, I would suggest getting a bigger composter, but that could be a pretty penny. I'm really loving this Food Recycler and I still highly recommend.

I'm not adverse to having a garbage disposal and after we just did a remodel on a 17-year-old home that we have owned I found in the garbage disposal wastewater line 30% blockage minimum from the garbage disposal and we use a very high-end disposal and always have. We've also treated our pipes with toxifying chemicals to keep the pipes clear.When we remodeled the kitchen I did not want to have another garbage disposal because when I rerouted the piping I noticed that heavy blockage in my pipes and was perturbed at minimum. I don't like all those chemicals going into your water supply and I don't care what a water company does you can't get it out.We were more than content in our new sink with its little basket to just dump that in the recycling or compost pile. And here we go with the food cycler from Vitamix. I think Vitamix is definitely leading the way here. We basically take all of our cooking goods and instead of throwing it in the trash or in the garbage disposal we just have the unit sitting next to the preparation area and it has a charcoal filter lid that rests simply on the top.We are a family of three currently and that amount of food prep is what gets cycled every night. If we have a heavy prep day we may do two cycles.I really appreciate this product because the volume that would go down my sink or in the trash can is cut by 100% in the sink and 96% minimum in trash because it dehydrates it grinds it and leaves it like a loose sediment. It even does small bones but they are still in their form so we just run those into the trash.If we run a batch of non-animal related products we can take the remnant at a 10 to 1 ratio with soil and amend our soil and use it to consume in our bodies but if we use eggshells or cheese or something like that then we do not consume that in our bodies and at the same ratio use that for our flower planting.It is so nice to know that my pipes are clean and our waste is minimalized. I'm not being a snotty person or anything like that it's just that having a farm/rancher mentality you tend to take care of everything that is before you and you waste not if you want not. Farmers and ranchers are good stewards of the Earth and that is a bit of a bias and an approach. And to have a product like this is awesome.The underlying question is would I buy another one and I would definitely buy another one and I hope that some of the pricing will get a little less than a quality food grinder under the sink. I guess a question would be do we miss having a garbage disposal and the answer is resoundingly no. We have already adapted not even in a month of use and people are amazed that it's 4-Hour cycle.Let's say we have some friends over for breakfast and we have a heavy processing day. Once the food is fully been prepped and the plates have been cleaned after the food has been eaten into this device we may run it right then because about 4 hours from now it'll be ready and it could be a little more than that depending on volume.What do we do if we have another meal in between we then simply leave one plate with that preparation remnant and after dumping the original run will add the next remnant and then into dinner and of course start the cycle of nightly running. This product is well made, extremely simple to operate and a blessing for us.I think another nice thing is not hearing a garbage disposal run or that putrid smell that emanates and that you have to constantly clean. That is a small benefit that I was not expecting.Lastly, we are very mindful of our sink/drain management and what goes down that pipe. It has to end up somewhere. If I put something that is not necessarily great because of a habit or what I've been trained to do and it affects your water supply then I have not been a good neighbor to you and I have caused you an extra layer of toxicity that your body does not need.So there you go, I hope you enjoy the purchase and maybe you have to wait for it to go on sale like we did and I am asking Vitamix to get a little bit lower price on that thing. But I would definitely save a little money and buy it. We try to pay for things in advance and wait until we have the money to pay for it as to not create a vicious cycle of credit and more so indebtedness.Thank you Vitamix for a well thought out product and you got full thumbs up from us. Blessings to you all.