Ten Million Pounds Recycled: Mill Accelerates Impact as Households and Offices Transform Wasted Food Habits
SAN BRUNO, Calif., June 26, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Mill, the innovative food recycling company, released new data that demonstrates major momentum in its mission to eliminate food from landfills and reshape everyday behavior at home and work. With customer impact data, an updated life-cycle analysis (LCA), and growing local partnerships, Mill is unlocking ways to keep more food out of landfills, stop food waste before it starts, and create smarter, more efficient systems for households, workplaces, and communities.
"We know from our experience at Nest that people change their behavior when the better choice is also the easier one. That's where Mill breaks through while other solutions fall short," said Matt Rogers, Cofounder and CEO at Mill. "We designed Mill to be a no-brainer: simpler, cleaner, and more efficient than anything else out there—and the data shows that it's working."
With Mill, People Are Recycling More—and Wasting Less
Food waste remains one of the most overlooked global challenges. In 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that just 3.7% of all food scraps nationwide were composted. Food is the single largest category in landfills, and when it breaks down it releases methane—a powerful greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a twenty-year period.
Mill is simple and intuitive to use, powered by the most in-depth view of wasting behavior in the country. This data fuels smarter decision-making for individuals and organizations, and helps drive meaningful change across the entire resource system.
To date, households and workplaces using Mill have kept nearly 10 million pounds of wasted food out of landfills. People using Mill are not only highly engaged—adding an average of one pound of food scraps to their food recyclers daily—but also reducing how much excess food scraps they generate.
- According to a survey of Mill customers, even before owning a Mill, users recovered just over 26% of their food scraps (higher than the national average). But after bringing Mill into their homes, that number surged to nearly 90%.
- Nearly half of surveyed Mill customers said they waste less food since adopting Mill. Among those, 60.4% say they're cooking differently, 49.8% are shopping differently, and 46.7% have changed how they store food.
- Internal Mill data confirms that over the first few months of use, customers reduce what goes into their Mill by roughly 20%—a sign that they're changing how they buy, cook, and store food.
Mill's approach—quietly drying and grinding food scraps into shelf-stable "Food Grounds"—makes it radically simpler to keep food out of landfills. Whether used at home, composted locally, or sent back to Mill to be turned into a chicken feed ingredient, food scraps are recovered as a resource and used to support the American food system.
New Life-Cycle Assessment Reflects Real-World Behavior
Mill uses a life-cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify the net carbon avoidance from the use of Mill's food recycling system. Mill published the original version of its scoping LCA in January 2023, which was based on early field data. By making this data available early on, Mill invited others to review, critique, and assess the approach.
In early 2025, Mill updated its scoping LCA to reflect over a year's worth of real-world usage data from tens of thousands of its food recycling devices—many of which are now second-generation models that are faster, quieter, and more efficient. The revised model also accounts for updated scientific literature, refined manufacturing footprints, and behavioral trends.
Key Findings from the Updated 2025 LCA:
- The typical Mill household avoids 477 kg-CO2e per device per year through improved food scrap management.
- Behavior change habits, such as changes in food purchasing and usage behavior (source reduction), result in another 258 kg-CO2e avoided/device/year.
- This results in a total of 735 kg-CO2e avoided/device/year when combining the above impacts. This is based on EPA data on typical management of residential food waste in the U.S.1, and recent survey data of how Mill customers manage their Food Grounds.
- For households that were previously landfilling all wasted food—and now send Food Grounds back to Mill to be turned into a chicken feed ingredient—the emissions benefit rises to 899 kg-CO2e/device/year.
The updated study reinforces that even with the energy and resources required to build and operate the food-recycling system, Mill could reduce a household's overall emissions by nearly three-quarters of a metric ton of CO2e per year.
Strengthening Hyper-Local Food Systems through Community Partnerships
Mill is sharing new results from its community composting partnership with R.City in Phoenix, where Food Grounds from Mill customers are collected and composted at R.City's local farm. Customers can opt into a Farm Box and enjoy fresh produce grown with the help of their own food scraps.
Mill's first community composting partnership has delivered significant operational and infrastructure benefits:
- 5X faster growth rate for R.City
- More efficient routes, with fewer individual pickups required
- Up to 4X increase in customer capacity using the same vehicle fleet
In Phoenix alone, food kept out of landfills from the Mill x R.City service has translated to a reduction of more than 10,000 ton-miles in garbage truck weight off the roads—roughly the equivalent of a ten-ton truck driving 1,000 fewer miles. Miles off the road contributes to lower operational costs for haulers and a better use of local infrastructure for cities. For people at home, it means a cleaner kitchen and a lighter trash bag.
By helping more residents get engaged in keeping food out of the trash and sending scraps back to farms, Mill and R.City's partnership not only boosts participation in community agriculture but also fuels the growth of local business—showcasing a model of circular impact that other cities and composters can rally behind.
About Mill
About Mill Industries Inc. ("Mill")
Mill makes it easy to prevent food waste at home with an innovative new kitchen experience and pathways that keep food out of landfills. Food isn't trash. Together, we can do better.
Mill was founded in 2020 by Matt Rogers and Harry Tannenbaum, who worked together at Nest, building the iconic Nest Learning Thermostat and other smart home products. The lessons they learned about encouraging new habits at home that are good for people and the planet were applied in creating Mill to change our perception of waste, starting in the kitchen.
Mill is a trademark of Mill Industries Inc.
1 https://www.epa.gov/waste-reduction-model/documentation-waste-reduction-model
SOURCE Mill Industries Inc.
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