It was one of the more unusual gifts we got that year: circular sections of black plastic and a white package that squirmed of its own accord. The plastic pieces made up the sides of a three-foot tall cylinder while the white package contained its new residents, a great writhing globe of worms.

Since then, five years ago, the insects in our wormery have chomped their way through countless veg peelings and tea bags. There's no smell, no mess (until you extract the waste, which has the consistency of wet cake dough) and they produce an endless supply of liquid compost which, when heavily diluted, can be used on houseplants or the garden.

Government research out this week shows £10.2bn-worth of avoidable food waste ends up in landfill each year across the UK. Here in Scotland, we throw out 650,000 tonnes of food every year. All of this breaks down to produce greenhouse gases, so the first priority should be to reduce the amount we waste in the first place. But then we should be keeping what remains out of landfill, where it rots anaerobically to produce methane, a greenhouse gas many times more powerful than carbon dioxide. That's where wormeries, composters and cone-shaped digesters come in. These plastic containers are to be found in thousands of British gardens like so many Daleks Against Climate Change. The question is, what are their relative merits?

Start with a composter. A compost bin can be easily made using old wood or pallets. The important thing is to ensure that air can circulate - essential for making fast, odour-free compost. Compost bins can take all plant-based, uncooked matter and veteran composters stress the importance of balancing green and brown matter: that is, nitrogen-rich moist stuff such as green leaves, vegetable and fruit peelings, weeds before they go to seed, coffee grounds and egg shells (green); and carbon-rich typically dry material, such as leaves and grass, prunings, straw and vacuum lint. You can't compost meat, fish or dairy, anything fatty, oily or chemically treated. Opinion is a bit divided on cooked rice and pasta, with some claiming it will attract rats (though this is less likely to be a problem with a lidded bin).

Wormeries, by contrast, can be kept indoors, making them viable for flats, though a balcony would be the better option. Manufacturers insist they don't smell if used properly (don't overfeed them). Fruit flies can be an issue (as with compost bins), but you can reduce them by keeping kitchen waste in an airtight container before transferring it to the wormery and once there, burying it and covering the lot with wet newspaper (this should limit opportunities for egg-laying).

Wormeries like Wiggly Wigglers and Original Organics do not use earthworms, but other native species like Tigers. They take roughly the same things as composters, including bits of cardboard, but no citrus, fish, meat, dairy or thick woody bits; they can also cope with rice, pasta and pizza.

To eliminate your food waste altogether, though, you'll need a digester such as Green Cone. This copes with fish skins, animal bones and mouldy cheese: all food, really. It must be sited outside, somewhere sunny with good drainage, and consists of a basket dug into the ground, and two cones, a black inner one and a green outer one, above ground. An accelerant is used at the outset and during cold weather, and the process produces water, carbon dioxide and a small amount of residue.

Alternatively, you could try Japanese bokashi (bran-based with digestive bacteria, fungi and yeast in it) which is added to kitchen waste (including meat, fish, dairy and bones) in an airtight container kept indoors. After a fortnight, this potent mixture can be added to the composter, wormery or dug into the garden.

With an army of worms and ranks of garden Daleks to help, it'll be sayonara to all that food waste.