Mill聽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聽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鈥攖he equivalent of a single strawberry鈥攚hich 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鈥攂y over 20% over the first four months鈥攁nd 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聽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.聽Our first year of data鈥攚hich is the first of its kind ever generated鈥攕hows 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鈥攁nd help people become more aware of and reduce the amount of excess food they buy at the store鈥攖he long-term impact of Mill will be enormous, from both an environmental and an economic perspective.”
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聽recycler at home and impact reporting in the Mill app.
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.”