Mill keeps your kitchen — and the planet — clean (2023)

The food-shrinking, de-stinking Mill kitchen bin is just one part of your membership. Here’s how it all works together.

Because we have a limited supply of bins, we’re starting with a reservation system. We’ll be releasing new batches of bins every month, starting spring 2023. If you’d like to be one of the first people in line for a Mill Membership (and a bin!), you can reserve now with a fully refundable $33 deposit.

At Mill, we’re doing things a little bit differently. The bin is only part of a Mill Membership and can’t be purchased separately.

It’s a membership because the management of wasted food is bigger than any single device. The average household will generate 150-200lbs of Food Grounds per year, and Mill helps our members manage that volume, and put it to good use. It's not just a better kitchen experience; it's also a fully closed loop.

Your membership also includes:

1. Impact tracking and app2. Charcoal odor filter replacements3. Dedicated member support4. Membership warranty5. The option to send Food Grounds via pre-paid shipping (once a month for most members)

The Mill kitchen bin turns kitchen scraps into dried, ground-up food that we call Food Grounds. Food Grounds are still food, minus the water, bulk, odor, and ick.Food Grounds aren’t compost. Compost is produced when microbes digest kitchen scraps, which takes weeks or months, not hours — despite what others might say. While Food Grounds can be made into compost or added to your garden, it is a delicate process that can result in mold, cause odors, and attract pests.Sending us your Food Grounds is not required, but we highly recommend it because it is the most practical way to keep your kitchen scraps in the food system, as we work to turn them into food for chickens.

The food we throw away is still food. It takes a lot of land, water, fertilizer, and effort to get food from the farm to our tables — so it’s important for our food to stay in the food system.There are ways to make the best use of food that’s uneaten. First, feed people. Then, feed animals that produce food for people. Both options align with the EPA’s food recovery hierarchy and the hierarchy of destinations for achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3.

We’ll take the Food Grounds you send us, homogenize them, and work to turn them into food for chickens.

Currently, we’re working through the necessary scientific and regulatory processes to establish a safe and nutritious chicken feed ingredient we candistribute commercially. We’ll share more on our progress later this year.

We designed the Mill kitchen bin to dry, shrink, and de-stink kitchen scraps as efficiently as possible via long, low-energy cycles. Your energy use will depend on the amount and kind of kitchen scraps you add to it. We estimate the bin will use around 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity per day, averaged over multiple weeks of usage (if you generate around 1.5lbs of kitchen scraps per day). Today, that’s about the same amount of energy per day as an energy-efficient dishwasher, but with software updates, the bin will keep getting better and more efficient over time.

The cost of energy will depend on your local energy rates — you can check your energy bill to see how much you pay per kilowatt-hour (kWh). At $0.20 per kWh (approximately the national average), that’s about $6 per month.

Want to use less energy? Try limiting liquids by doing things like straining wet foods before adding the solids to the bucket.

Big picture: based on our preliminary study, you can avoid about a half-ton of greenhouse gas emissions per year with a Mill Membership. Instead of filling the air with methane, your kitchen scraps can go back into the food system, as we work to turn them into food for chickens. To learn more about the climate impact of an annual Mill Membership, click here.