Frequently asked questions

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Uneaten food is the most common material in landfills and most of it comes from our homes. When that food rots, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas that is 80x more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

Based on our preliminary study, you can avoid about a half ton of greenhouse gas emissions per year with a Mill Membership. Instead of filling the air with methane, your kitchen scraps can go back into the food system, as we work to turn them into food for chickens.

To learn more about the climate impact of an annual Mill Membership, click here.

Mill members have the option to send their Food Grounds to us whenever their bin gets full, in order to keep their kitchen scraps in the food system and out of the landfill. Prepaid return boxes, shipping fees, and scheduled pickups are all included in the Mill Membership.

Based on our preliminary study, you can avoid about a half-ton of greenhouse gas emissions per year with a Mill Membership. Instead of filling the air with methane, your kitchen scraps can go back into the food system, as we work to turn them into food for chickens.

We are partnering with USPS to ship Food Grounds because they’re already visiting almost every house, every day. And since Mill households will, on average, send just one box of Food Grounds every few weeks, USPS vehicles will have the capacity to manage the load.

With this approach, every box of Food Grounds could be transported 15,000-20,000 miles (close to a trip around the world) before it could negate the benefits of keeping food out of landfills and avoiding methane emissions.

For the Food Grounds packaging, we use a recyclable LDPE plastic slide-lock liner in a 100% recyclable cardboard box. Since we receive every box of Food Grounds at our feed facility, we’re able to inspect and sort the boxes for reusability and recycle the bags.

We’re also actively exploring other sustainable packaging options. If you have any suggestions, please contact us.

To learn more about the climate impact of an annual Mill Membership, please click here.

The Mill kitchen bin is manufactured at a LEED-certified facility in Guadalajara, Mexico. We prioritized manufacturing in North America to minimize the greenhouse gas emissions impact of shipping bins from the factory to the homes of our Mill members.

Our manufacturer also requires their supply chain to commit to their Responsible Business Alliance Code of Conduct to ensure the health and safety of the employees at the facility.

At this time, we’re identifying our initial partners who are interested in purchasing a chicken feed ingredient produced from recovered household food. We’ll be deliberate and thoughtful about our selection of potential farm partners, taking into account concerns about the environmental, welfare, and equity impacts of various production models.

We’ll share more about our progress later this year. If you have any suggestions, please contact us.

For the kitchen bin packaging, we use 100% recyclable cardboard for the box and foam for the interior. We hate the foam deeply, but it was the best available option to ensure the bin arrives undamaged from our factory to your door. We vetted mushroom packaging, molded fiber, and a bunch of other sustainable options — none of them could protect a device of our size. We’re nevertheless committed to continuous improvement and are engaging with new providers who offer curbside recyclable foam alternatives.

For the Food Grounds packaging, we use a recyclable LDPE plastic slide-lock liner in a 100% recyclable cardboard box. This solution offers Mill members the most practical way to keep their Food Grounds out of landfills. You can read more about the climate impact here. Since we receive every box of Food Grounds at our feed facility, we’re able to inspect and sort the boxes for reusability and recycle the bags.

We’re also actively exploring other sustainable packaging options. If you have any suggestions, please send them to us at mill.com/contact.

We consider conservation in every decision we make — from sourcing product materials to community outreach.

We’re internally tracking what we’re doing, what we consider, and how we’ll get better across each area of our business.

– Device production: building and delivering Mill kitchen bins for households. – Household participation: improving household kitchen experiences. – Membership services: improving Mill member experiences. – Maintaining food pathways: enabling highest and best end uses for Food Grounds. – Overall: building Mill as a sustainable company.

We’re building an approach that covers: – What we do to stop waste. – How we prevent emissions. – How we help people.

This approach is embedded into our company onboarding program, our product development process, and our company-wide goals. We’re looking forward to sharing more about our progress. If you have any suggestions, please contact us.

We use a life-cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify the impact of an annual Mill Membership.

Prior to having data from households with Mill Memberships, we prepared an externally reviewed Scoping LCA as an interim modeling effort. This is typically used to identify “hot spots” — areas of a process or business which are disproportionately impactful.

By publishing our initial estimates, we want to invite more people to help shape how we think and how we outsmart waste. To learn more about the climate impact of an annual Mill Membership, please click here.

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