Trash To Treasure: AI-Powered Composting Device Converts Kitchen Waste Into Nutrient-Rich Soil For Plants
With its combination of AI, automation, and user-friendly design, the innovation could play a crucial role in promoting sustainable living for urban households.
By Anubha Jain
Published : October 6, 2025 at 6:11 PM IST
Bengaluru: Waste management is entering a new phase, driven by AI-powered home solutions that push innovation from policy to the kitchen. One such solution is ‘Chewie Max,’ an AI-powered home robot that decomposes wet kitchen and household waste into odour-free, regenerated soil—making households active partners in the circular economy. With a vision to address wet waste at the household level and provide a cleaner environment and society, Chewie Max produces a nutrient-rich recycled soil mix that can be used directly for home gardening or organic farming.
Compact enough to fit under a kitchen sink, Chewie operates on a 6-amp power supply with minimal water usage and can process up to 120 kg of wet waste per month. It also offers cloud-based insights into users’ food habits and carbon footprint. Developed by the Bengaluru-based B2C company Mankomb Technologies, this unique machine is priced at Rs 34,999.
"The primary issue with kitchen wet waste is its unpleasant odour, which inspired the idea for Chewie Max," said Mrudul Mudotholy, co-founder and CEO of Mankomb. He, along with Dinesh Babu Sukumar (co-founder and CMO of Mankomb) and Jawahar Arumugam (co-founder and CTO), was driven by Bengaluru’s persistent challenges with waste segregation and delayed collection.
In an interview with ETV Bharat, Mrudul Mudotholy and Dinesh Babu Sukumar discussed the product and its features in detail.
"We don’t want to repeat the landfill situation of Bengaluru's Sarjapur in Mandoor, so we decided to create a solution—the Chewie Max system," Mudotholy said.
"While waste is essentially homogeneous, segregation remains a major challenge. Even when communities diligently segregate waste, it often gets mixed once it leaves the premises. Since mixed and segregated waste require different treatment methods, mixed waste typically ends up in landfills, while segregated waste can be processed into compostable material. This leads to inefficiencies and ultimately more waste ending up in landfills," he explained. "That’s why, through Chewie, we chose to focus on households first, rather than commercial establishments.”
How Chewie Max operates
Chewie Max, built on the VECA system (Vision, Environment Orchestration, Cloud, and over-the-air updates), features automatic dosing and self-care. Using on-device vision, it identifies greens, vegetable peels, food scraps, and proteins such as meat or bones, while flagging plastics, cutlery, fluids, and other dry or unwanted components. A shredder then breaks it down into smaller pieces, and sends it to a digestion chamber where it is converted and recycled into soil. The machine utilises artificial intelligence to make the process efficient, completing it within hours.
Mudotholy stated that in traditional methods, it was challenging to control the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, resulting in leachate as the output. Leachate refers to the liquid that drains from decomposing waste, and it is one of the main reasons why composting units produce foul odours or stinks. Chewie Max works in controlled parameters and in real time, optimising the carbon–nitrogen ratio, dosing enzymes, and regulating oxygen, temperature, and moisture to ensure efficient, smell-free decomposition.
This is the key since improper balance is why public composting units stink from kilometres away. The automatic dosing feature of Chewie predicts heavy loads, adjusts cycles accordingly, clears jams, and self-cleans—eliminating the need for user maintenance. Since proteins are also present in the waste, the dosing system measures the required amount of enzymes needed to break them down. This operates in a fully automated manner, controlled by Chewie’s microcontrollers.
Discussing the technical hurdles faced during development, Dinesh Babu Sukumar explained, “Designing Chewie to be seamless and touch-free required advanced technology. However, user behaviour remains a challenge, as people are accustomed to simply dumping waste into a bucket, and India’s unique wet waste adds further complexity. Unlike conventional global systems, Chewie is tailored to fit Indian kitchens and waste patterns. What makes it unique is the application of AI in waste management, with the goal of creating practical, commercial solutions that use information more effectively.”
VECA system: An in-depth look
Mrudul Mudotholy explained how the VECA system, powering the Chewie Max, enables better monitoring and management of wet waste:
Vision refers to identifying the composition of the waste entering the Chewie unit—such as leaves, vegetables, fibrous particles, or meat. Since the bio decomposition of different materials varies—for example, carbohydrates break down easily compared to meat that takes a longer time—the Chewie system adapts its processing methods accordingly. There are many approaches to bio decomposition.
Once the waste is shredded and transferred into the digestion chamber, Environment Orchestration controls conditions such as temperature, moisture, and microbial activity. This accelerates the growth of microorganisms already present in the waste, breaking down carbohydrates and other organic matter in a carbon-neutral manner. For meat and related products, specialised enzymes are used to aid decomposition. By creating ideal conditions for microbial and enzymatic activity, the Chewie achieves efficient, sustainable breakdown of various waste types—whether carbon-neutral, carbon-positive, or carbon-negative—depending on the process chosen, he added.
Cloud and OTA play a crucial role. For the past two years, Mankomb has been researching wet-waste decomposition and has learned that the system must evolve and improve continuously.
Mudotholy said, “Whenever we gain new insights—such as changes in usage patterns, variations in the types of waste processed, or differing environmental conditions—we collect and analyse this data to refine the vision model and the AI that drives bio decomposition.”
Future upgrades will include features such as detecting foreign objects—like cutlery or plastics—entering the Chewie unit. OTA updates will make the system progressively smarter and more adaptive over time. It will also provide nutritional insights, such as the proportion of food prepared at home versus store-bought. After a month of usage, Chewie shares such information with the user. Over time, users will also receive insights from the machine—for example, oil consumption, increased use of deep-fried items, or higher intake of trans fats. Since the system tracks what goes into the machine, it can analyse dietary patterns and provide feedback on the user’s nutritional balance.
Potential impact of machines like Chewie Max
When asked how much wet waste a typical household can divert from landfills using Chewie Max each month, Mudotholy said that typically, a family of four generates between 1 and 2 kg of wet waste per day. On special occasions, such as birthday parties or when guests visit, this quantity can increase. The machine can process up to 120 kg of wet waste per month, helping a family divert approximately 60 to 70 kg of wet waste from landfills each month.
He further stated that each household diverts approximately 500 kg of wet waste per year. In a community of 1,000 households, this amounts to 500,000 kg (5 lakh kg) of wet waste—equivalent to removing 10 large garbage trucks’ worth of waste from landfills every month.
Responding to a question about how Chewie Max aligns with India’s broader waste-management and sustainability goals, Mudotholy said, “In the next 5–10 years, waste management will see a major shift toward innovative solutions. While composters, incinerators, and landfills remain, products like Chewie Max can fundamentally transform the landscape.”
Domain expert Professor Yogesh Kumar, Alliance University, Bengaluru, says that AI-enabled home waste systems can turn Indian households into active, intelligent partners in building a sustainable, resource-efficient future.
"Smart bins equipped with sensors, computer vision, and edge-AI chips can auto-sort plastics, metals, food waste, and e-waste, compact materials, and stream real-time data to city dashboards," he adds. "This would enable municipalities to forecast waste volumes, optimise collection routes, and direct resources to bio-CNG plants (under the SATAT initiative), composting units, or recycling hubs, making every household a node in the circular economy."
Highlighting affordability and inclusivity as critical factors in India, Kumar talks about the global impact of smart bins. He says, "Globally, South Korea and Singapore have proved how AI-driven bins and pricing models can push recycling rates above 60 per cent, while AMP Robotics and ZenRobotics in the US and Europe are deploying AI robots to sort waste with speed and precision in recycling plants."
Chewie units for commercial spaces
Mudotholy revealed that the company plans to launch new versions of its machines, Chewie Z and Chewie Pro, suitable for restaurants and cafeterias. Chewie Z is the smaller variant, and offers similar functionality as Chewie Max, but is designed for smaller kitchens and apartments, offices with a compact footprint. The Chewie Pro is expected to launch in 2026, while the Chewie Z is slated for 2027.
