Closing the loop on food waste

What is Mill?

Mill was created to keep food out of the landfill and in the food ecosystem. A Mill membership comes with a bin for food that would otherwise be wasted—kitchen scraps go in, Food Grounds come out. They’re dry, not smelly, can collect in the bin for weeks, and take up less space than food would in the trash. Food Grounds can be sent back to Mill to turn into food for chickens, or mixed into backyard composting.

The app

The Mill app is the window into seeing what the bin is up to at any time. Users can schedule when they’d like the bin to process kitchen scraps, arrange free Food Grounds pick-ups, and check what can and can’t go in the kitchen bin. As the lead designer, I work closely with PM and engineering to design, build, and iterate on the app for our 0-to-1 product and beyond.

Why it matters

Uneaten food is the most common material in landfills and half of it comes from our homes. When that food rots, it produces methane, a gas that’s 80x worse for the climate than CO₂ emissions. Sending kitchen scraps to the landfill creates 3.5x the emissions compared to using a Mill kitchen bin and mailing Food Grounds back so they can feed chickens. (Check the math.)

Press + Recognition

Best Inventions of 2023 - Time
Mill is Turning Your Food Waste Into More Food - Forbes
The Promises of the Home “Composting” Machine - The New Yorker
Mill Kitchen Bin Review - Food52

Branding

Manual - Mill case study