Days after the announcement of
the Biden-Harris Administration's National Strategy to
Reduce Food Loss and Waste and Recycle Organics, Mill's new
data demonstrates tangible progress: the food-recycling system has
processed over two million pounds of food in its first year of
operations and is influencing cooking and shopping behavior to help
people save money and reduce waste
SAN
BRUNO, Calif., June 18,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Award-winning
food-recycling system Mill today announced new data from its
first year of operations helping American households prevent food
waste. Mill's insights represent the largest, most accurate look at
food waste behavior in homes ever measured. The data shows that
Mill is increasing awareness of food waste, driving consumer
behavior changes, and presenting new opportunities for people to
save money and reduce waste.
Mill is the food recycling
system from Nest Cofounder Matt Rogers and early
Nest leader Harry Tannenbaum that
turns household food scraps into clean, dry grounds that can feed
farms or gardens. Built by engineers from Apple and Google, Mill's
food recycler is sensitive to food scrap inputs as small as 15
grams—the equivalent of a single strawberry—which means Mill has a
precise understanding of how much food is being added to its fleet
of connected food-recyclers. This means that households across the
country now have real-time visibility into how much food they're
wasting and can act on it.
Mill aggregated millions of device days of data from
April 2023 to May 2024, and found that the median Mill
household added around 5.5 pounds of food scraps per household per
week. Notably, the median amount of food scraps added to Mill
decreased over time—by over 20% over the first four months—and then
stabilized. Survey results from customers reinforced this pattern,
with one in three respondents sharing that using Mill decreased the
amount of food waste they generated. Notably, 73% of
respondents reported putting zero food into the trash after
having Mill at home.1
This demonstrates that Mill is changing behavior in a
sustained way. In a time of record inflation and rising food
prices, with the average American family wasting almost
$1,900 per year on uneaten
food2, a 20% reduction in food waste could save
households at least $380 per
year.
"No one likes wasting food, and changing behavior is
hard. That's why, when designing Mill, we focused on making it
incredibly easy to use. We also know that it's very difficult to
improve things that aren't measured. That's why it was so critical
to us to include feedback loops for measurement, so households are
able to track their progress and take action to save time and
money. Our first year of data—which is the first of its kind
ever generated—shows unequivocally that Mill is
working," said Harry
Tannenbaum, Cofounder and President of Mill. "If we
can process over 2 million pounds of household food in a little
over a year—and help people become more aware of and reduce the
amount of excess food they buy at the store—the long-term impact of
Mill will be enormous, from both an environmental and an economic
perspective."
Mill's new data comes on the heels of last week's announcement
from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), and the White House of the National
Strategy to Reduce Food Loss and Waste and Recycle
Organics. The National Strategy emphasizes the
importance of improving measurement of food loss and waste and
tracking progress toward goals. These include efforts to monitor,
measure, and verify the efficacy of programmatic efforts, as well
as a $2.5 million investment in
consumer message testing and outreach. This announcement
underscores the increasing importance of tackling food waste in
America, not just as an environmental consideration but also an
economic one.
Mill surveyed hundreds of its customers on their food waste
behaviors at home before and after using Mill. The majority of
respondents shared that Mill had increased their awareness of how
much food they were wasting, with 59% saying they produced more
food waste than they thought. This insight was driven by a
combination of having the food recycler at home and impact
reporting in the Mill app.
Implications for Researchers, Governments,
Educators, and Consumer Advocates
Mill's data has important implications for researchers, food
waste advocates, and waste management leaders seeking precise ways
to measure and impact food waste behavior in the kitchen and
increase organics diversions efforts. Mill's insights can be
leveraged at the community level to help local leaders understand
and influence the unique challenges of organics collection, and
make more informed procurement decisions.
Until Mill, no tool existed to precisely measure household food
waste generation. Instead, cities have had to rely on costly and
imprecise waste characterization studies that estimate tons
delivered to landfill. Mill's innovative connected measurement
system can uncover unique, unprecedented, household-level data
about behavior related to food waste in the home.
Professor Brian Roe, Leader of
the Ohio State University Food Waste
Collaborative, commented:
"The Mill data provides a
compelling lens through which to understand food waste behavior
among one segment of the U.S. population, and may yield insights
that can be leveraged by both private and public entities to help
consumers reduce waste and save money."
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.
Follow Mill: Instagram and Facebook
1 The respondents who were still tossing some food
scraps in the trash said they were mostly from the small list of
inputs Mill doesn't accept, such as very large bones or excessively
moldy food. Before Mill, only 8% of respondents reported putting
zero food scraps in the garbage.
2 This calculation assumes 2.5 persons/household
according to 2022 US Census Bureau; Bureau of Labor Statistics and
2022 data from ReFED that the average American spends $759 on food that goes uneaten:
https://refed.org/food-waste/consumer-food-waste
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SOURCE Mill Industries Inc.