The Canberra Environment Centre will open their solar-powered compost to the public on Saturday at 10am and have encouraged locals to bring their own scraps for composting.

The 700-litre machine, dubbed 'the Hungry Composter', will produce a load of fertiliser each week, with the centre to allow the public to take home fertiliser when they produce more.

The centre's director, Ryan Lungu, said they hoped to make Canberrans aware food scraps shouldn't go in to landfill.

They calculated Canberra's cafes produced an average of about 100 litres per day in food scraps, enough to fill the machine itself each week.

Mr Lungu also said about 40 to 50 per cent of Australia's landfill was organic waste, but the machine could process this into "incredible soil".

"The alternative is that it sits in landfill and it releases methane, so it's pretty obvious what the better option is," Mr Lungu said.

Food scraps put into plastic and left to rot in landfill create methane, a greenhouse gas. By putting it in compost and airing it, the scraps produced a negligible amount of greenhouse gas.

The centre is only taking waste from the public and not commercial business.

Punters can bring up to 5 litres to the Acton site each week to place in the provided black bins 24 / 7.

"It would be a good problem to have if we have too many scraps," Mr Lungu said.

The centre purchased the machine with $24,200 from the ACT's Community Zero Emissions Grants last financial year.

Gardening coordinator Karina Bontes Forward said our waste stream as it existed was linear: from farm, to plate, to landfill.

"Where as we're [the centre] going from gardens, to composting machine, back into the gardens," Ms Bontes Forward said.

"It's about reducing our waste streams and reframing it from being waste into a resource."

Ms Bontes Forward said the machine could take anything organic, even things household compost couldn't, like onions, citrus or meat.

Even newspaper or used paper towel could be composted, but anything glossy or plastic couldn't. Liquids and pet waste also can't be placed in the machine.

Projects coordinator Gaby Ho said the food scraps were a good resource for fertiliser.

"So why not just make the most out of something that we produce every day," Ms Ho said.

The machine can take anything organic: raw or cooked fruit and vegetables including citrus and onion, fish and shellfish, meat and poultry, cereals and grains, coffee grounds, newspaper, used paper towel and dairy and eggs.

It can't take anything inorganic: plastics, fruit stickers, waxed cardboard or paper including milk cartons, coffee cups, bones, large amount of acidic waste, liquid or pet waste.

The centre is at the corner of Lawson Crescent and Lenox Crossing at the Acton Peninsula.  For more information visit the website: www.canberraenvironment.org/the-hungry-composter.