Consumer Services
Mill
A magical kitchen bin that recycles food while you sleep
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Leadership Profile
The Power of Making it Easy for People to Do the Right Thing
Matt Rogers and Harry Tannenbaum, the innovative minds behind the Nest Learning Thermostat, are transforming how people see waste. At Mill, they’re tackling the all too common and stinky problem of food getting tossed and left to rot in landfills with a new, magical kitchen bin that recycles food while you sleep. The best part? It’s as easy as using a trash can.
Keeping Food Out of the Trash
The Climate Challenge
In the US, 24% of landfill content is food, and 43% of that food comes from homes. This waste breaks down and emits methane– a gas that, over 20 years, traps 80x more heat than CO2.
“We waste a third of the food grown,” says Matt Rogers, CEO and Co-founder of Mill. “That’s like buying five bags of groceries and leaving two in the parking lot.”
“Not only does food release methane in landfills,” adds Harry Tannenbaum, President & Co-founder of Mill. “It ends up wasting all of the nutrients and resources that went into growing it and getting it to your plate.”
Seeking a Solution
Mill created a practical intervention–a bin that turns smelly food scraps into dried, odorless, nutrient-rich grounds. The bin fills up, and then customers can use USPS to return them, put them to use at home, or provide them to a local farm.
Better, Easier, More Convenient
Mill designed the bin to mimic tossing “away” while keeping food in the food system.
To gigascale, Matt advises that new solutions must be better, easier, and more convenient than current options. “If it relies on people radically changing what they’re used to, it’s less likely to achieve systems-level impact,” Matt shares. “The technology has to change, not the person.”
The Outcome
Mill aims to shift how we see waste generally. Mill figures keeping food out of the trash can help people reduce CO2e emissions by about 0.5 tons per household per year.
Meanwhile, pilots show Mill’s potential to support urban zero-waste goals while saving cities money, reducing landfill space, and eliminating smelly bins.
Meet Matt Rogers
We brought together the best engineers, designers, and product managers from the places I’ve worked in my career. I was confident that we could build something awesome, and we built what might be the best product I’ve ever made. And that’s a pretty high bar.