Mill, an award-winning food-recycling system, has officially published data which documents its first year of operations where it helped American households in cutting back on their food waste. Meant to convey Mill’s effectiveness when it comes to increasing awareness of food waste, driving consumer behavior changes, and presenting new opportunities for people to save money and reduce waste, the stated data marks the largest and most accurate lowdown ever measured on food waste behavior in homes throughout the country. Before we unpack this development any further, though, we must try and understand how Mill actually works on a practical note. Well, the answer resides in its ability to turn household food scraps into clean, dry grounds that can feed farms or gardens. The technology, markedly enough, has sensitivity to food scrap inputs as small as 15 grams, the equivalent of a single strawberry, meaning it can precisely recognize how much food is being added to its fleet of connected food-recyclers. Another function attached to this very ability would be the way Mill is able to hand US households a real-time insight into their food wastage proportions.
Coming back to the newly-published data, to collect the same, Mill aggregated million different device days of data from April 2023 to May 2024. Once it did so, the technology discovered that the median Mill household added around 5.5 pounds of food scraps per week. Having said that, it must also be noted how the median amount of food scraps added to Mill would decrease over time by an estimated 20% over the first four months and then stabilize around that level. This pattern was only reinforced during a survey conducted in parallel with the stated research. You see, the given survey revealed that one in every three respondents was able to reduce the amount of food waste they generated through Mill. Among them, over 73% also reported putting zero food into the trash at one point after having Mill at home.
The importance carried by such a development can also be understood once you consider that an average American house wastes almost $1,900 per year just on uneaten food. Now, if we can achieve only a 20% reduction in food waste, it alone could save those 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, co-founder and President of Mill.
The development in question delivers a rather interesting follow up to one recent 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. This announcement basically related to the launch of US’ National Strategy to Reduce Food Loss and Waste and Recycle Organics. In case you weren’t aware, the stated strategy is design to emphasize upon improving measurement of food loss and waste and tracking progress towards goals. In a practical sense, such a pursuit will likely involve 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.
