Mill, an award-winning food-recycling system, has officially published results from its year-long pilot, a pilot where the company’s tested its food recycling system’s efficiency among the people living in City of Tacoma, Washington. To give you some context, back in February 2023, Mill and the City of Tacoma announced a first-of-its-kind agreement to pilot a new strategy for using connected in-home food recycling infrastructure and address the problem of residential food waste diversion. The pilot’s primary goal was to determine if Mill’s food recycling technology could increase citizen participation in food scraps source separation efforts, reduce contamination in the waste stream, and offer a new opportunity for residential customers to reduce the volume and price of their waste service by separating food scraps out of the waste stream. As for the result, they revealed how Mill was actually able to increase food scrap source separation both in households that have previously participated in municipal food scraps collection and those that hadn’t done so before. This translates to an easy way for Tacoma residents to enjoy a better kitchen experience, save on their waste and grocery bills, and prevent harmful methane emissions. In a concrete sense, the participants in Mill’s pilot program successfully separated ten times more food scraps than the average Tacoma household. Furthermore, nearly 84% of respondents to a post-pilot survey reported putting zero food scraps into the trash after having Mill at home. Beyond that, an estimated 50% of respondents, who had not previously used the City’s food scraps collection service, also went on to acknowledge Mill’s ability to improve both the quality and quantity of citizen participation in food scrap source separation efforts.
“The diversion numbers for the Mill pilot are impressive, and the technology has been generally effective in addressing the ick factor for residential customers who want to divert food waste, and have a willingness to pay for the service. We are interested in exploring ways that this type of technology can fit into our overall menu of solid waste services,” said Lewis Griffith, Solid Waste Division Manager for City of Tacoma.
Another 84% of respondents claimed that, while their garbage cart would be generally full or even overfull, literally none reported having an overfull garbage cart after deploying Mill. In fact, more than 56% reported having room to spare. Complimenting the same is how most surveyed households also saw a reduction in household chores, with 56% saying they were taking the trash out less frequently, and 72% stating that they were taking the garbage out once a week or less.
Interestingly, the findings in question follow up insights availed from Mill’s inaugural data report, which had previously demonstrated Mill’s capability when it comes to raising awareness of food waste, changing consumer behavior in a sustained way, as well as presenting new opportunities for people to save money and reduce waste. Such a demonstration becomes all the more important once you put that alongside over two million days worth of device data which claims that Mill customers nationwide decreased the overall amount of wasted food by over 20% in just the first four months of use.
Coming back to the study in question, it also fits in well with City of Tacoma’s stature as one of the most forward-leaning municipalities in the United States. You see, the city began collecting and recycling residential food waste back in 2012, and since then, it has been diverting up to 1,000 tons per year of compostable food waste from landfills.
“Participation and contamination are the Achilles’ heel of organics collection programs. This data demonstrates the type of breakthrough in overcoming the ick factor that this industry has been waiting for,” said Scott Smithline, Policy at Mill and Former Director of CalRecycle.
