A new startup called Mill wants your kitchen scraps.
Why? Well, the company has found a way to use those scraps to conserve nutrients and send them back to those who need them – specifically to farms as chicken food.
“Food isn’t trash,” said Matt Rogers, the founder and CEO of the company. “But until today, it was hard to do anything except throw uneaten food in the garbage.”
Around one third of the food intended for human consumption in the U.S. becomes food loss and waste, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Waste from kitchens is also “the single largest source of food in landfills,” per Mills.
“When food is discarded, all inputs used in producing, processing, transporting, preparing, and storing discarded food are also wasted,” said the department. “Food loss and waste also exacerbates the climate change crisis with its significant greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint.”
Mill charges its members $33 to use its “entirely new” food nutrient conservation system. Members receive a kitchen bin that dries, shrinks and “de-stinks” kitchen scraps overnight, according to the company. It said that this process turns the scraps into “nutrient-rich Food Grounds.”
When the bin is full – this should take a few weeks, according to the startup – members can schedule a food pickup through the Mill app.
“From there, we do the rest: working to turn your Food Grounds into a chicken feed ingredient so food stays food and becomes delicious all over again,” said the company.
Rogers, who founded Mill in 2020 with company President Harry Tannenbaum, said that food waste is a “solvable problem” that people can tackle together easier by using the Mill service.
“Our approach is a practical and easy way to stop wasting food at home, prevent rotting garbage on the curb, and reduce methane emissions,” said Tannenbaum. Both Rogers and Tannenbaum previously worked at Nest.
To sign up, those interested must reserve a membership at mill.com and activate it by plugging in their bin when it arrives, as well as downloading the app and connecting their bin to Wi-Fi. Through the app, members can track the amount of food they have diverted from landfills. Mill estimates that members can avoid about a half-ton of greenhouse gas emissions per household every year.
Once the bin is full, members empty the Food Grounds into a prepaid box for U.S. Postal Service Pickup.
“We’re working through the necessary scientific and regulatory processes to turn your Food Grounds into a safe and nutritious chicken feed ingredient,” said the company. “It’s different from composting and keeps food as food.”
According to Nature’s Best, chicken feed typically contains: corn, soybean meal, wheat or wheat middlings, cereal, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals.
“Reducing and preventing food waste can increase food security, foster productivity and economic efficiency, promote resource and energy conservation, and address climate change, which in turn, could also decrease climate change-related shocks to the supply chain,” according to the USDA.
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