Simplehuman vs Joseph Joseph

Joseph Joseph if you need to separate food waste, which is the fraction that actually smells — the Totem's removable 3-liter caddy is the feature simplehuman has no answer to. simplehuman if you need two dry streams behind one hands-free pedal, which is a nicer thing to use day to day.

#	Product	Best for	Price
01	Joseph Joseph Totem Max 60L Waste and Recycling UnitTrash, recycling and food waste in a single tower footprint, with replaceable carbon filters for the odor.	Best three-stream sorting	Check price on Amazon #ad How we make money
02	simplehuman 58L Step RecyclerThe cleanest answer to trash-plus-recycling in one unit: two compartments behind a single lid and a single pedal.	Best dual-compartment overall	Check price on Amazon #ad How we make money

This is the least like-for-like comparison in this hub. simplehuman builds the best version of a single bin and offers a two-compartment variant of it; Joseph Joseph designed a system around the premise that households produce three kinds of waste. Which is right depends on whether that premise describes you.

The two rows in bold on each side are the whole comparison. Joseph Joseph gives you a food caddy and built-in replaceable carbon filters. simplehuman gives you a pedal and a damped lid. Those are the real trade.

Separating paper from plastic does almost nothing for how your kitchen smells. Separating food scraps does almost everything.

The compounds people object to — putrescine and cadaverine from protein, hydrogen sulfide from eggs and brassicas — are produced by bacteria working on wet organic material. That material is a small fraction of the volume in a kitchen bin and essentially all of the odor. So a unit that isolates it in a small sealed container you can carry straight to the outside bin is solving the actual problem, and a unit that gives you two dry compartments is solving a tidiness problem.

That said, you can get the same effect for far less by running a separate countertop compost caddy alongside a simpler bin — which is cheaper, easier to wash, and can sit where you actually chop rather than across the room. The Totem's advantage is that it is one object rather than two. The full odor sequence.

Joseph Joseph's design decision is to stack the two 30-liter compartments vertically rather than side by side, so a unit handling three waste streams occupies the floor space of one bin. In a small kitchen that is genuinely clever and it is the reason the Totem exists.

The cost is that the lower compartment is at floor level. You are bending right down to empty it, and in a household where anyone has a bad back that is not a detail — it is a daily consideration that will decide whether the unit gets used properly. The compact 40-liter version is worse in this respect, because the whole thing is smaller and the lower bucket is tighter to get a hand into.

simplehuman's side-by-side arrangement means both compartments are at normal bin height and both open on one pedal. It takes more wall, and it is easier to use.

If you strip the comparison down, this is what it reduces to.

Two honest observations. Both brands push you towards their own liners, and on the simplehuman the two compartments can take different code letters — which is a genuine running annoyance, because it means two separate liner purchases. And neither brand publishes internal dimensions, so sizing a third-party bag for either involves measuring it yourself. How.

And the third option worth naming: a full-size single bin plus a separate countertop caddy. It is cheaper than either unit here, the caddy washes in a dishwasher, and it puts the food waste where you actually prepare food. Recyclers compared · compost caddies.