The Mill kitchen bin review: Change the way you throw out food

About The Mill Food Recycler

I first heard of The Mill Food Recycler while listening to an episode of actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s podcast, where she revealed that she was not just advertising the new product on her show, she’s an investor in the company.

It was by sheer coincidence that on the same day I listened to that podcast, I was asked to review the Mill, right after spending a couple of months testing the Reencle Home Composter. I was excited to try another version of something that would reduce the amount of trash I put in my garbage bin.

The Mill Food Recycler was developed by the folks who founded Google Nest, so they know a thing or two about smart home programming.

Thanks to a spacious, heat-proof food bucket that rests on an internal scale, new food can be added daily to the Mill and then a “dry and grind” cycle (programmed to turn on at the time of your choosing via the app) kicks it into action, heating and churning your old peels and leftovers into what looks like coffee grounds.

A series of indicator lights on the body of the machine also flash at various stages of use: White pulsating lights mean it’s on, a red light means it’s hot, and green pulsating lights mean the bucket is full.

How long it dries and grinds depends on the weight of what’s inside and how wet it is, meaning the smart machine adjusts its settings and cycles on its own, based on what kind of food you’ve added.

With the Mill, you can continuously add food for days or weeks. And with each daily cycle, it will continue to break food down, reducing it by up to 80%.

In addition to its smart capabilities, another unique feature of the Mill is its subscription plan for users to send their grounds back to a factory. From there, the grounds are processed into chicken feed, closing the food loop and ensuring that nothing—not even the packaging you send the food scraps back in—ends up as waste.

What does The Mill Food Recycler cost?

The Mill is one of the most expensive machines of its kind; if you’re purchasing it outright, it costs $999 (new filters, which currently cost $60, also need to be purchased annually).

If that cost feels prohibitive—or if you want to try the machine with no strings attached—you can opt into a subscription plan to rent it for $29.99/month (roughly $360/annually). This monthly fee includes the appliance rental, filter replacements, and a warranty.

For an additional monthly fee of $9.99, Mill owners and renters alike can also opt into the pickup subscription which ships food grounds back to their facility to be turned into chicken feed.

How we tested The Mill Food Recycler

Once the Mill was delivered and I removed the protective packaging, the only remaining setup was technical: downloading the Mill’s app, and syncing the Bluetooth-enabled Mill with my phone. (If you plan on having multiple people in the house using the app, everyone will need to download the app to their phones and sync with the machine separately.)

Perhaps the most important decision of all came when our family had to name our Mill in the app, and so in honor of Louis-Dreyfus, we named our food recycler Elaine Benes, her character on Seinfeld. (This proved to be a very entertaining way to use the Mill; “Elaine Benes is cooling down” notifications gave us a few laughs when we saw it.)

In addition to creating a name for the machine via the app, it will also tell you how many pounds of food are currently in the machine, and it features instructional guides that discuss everything from general bin maintenance to shipping your food grounds.

The remaining part of testing was as simple as throwing things in the bin. The Mill’s app has an entire section outlining what can and can’t be added to the machine (a handy fridge magnet is also included, and it displays a cheat sheet of acceptable foods).

Since the machine is essentially a turbo-powered food dehydrator, it takes much longer to process wet foods, and things like oily foods or saucy leftovers are not recommended. Large animal bones, hard shells, and paper or compostable plastics are also not recommended.

In the app, I chose a time—9 p.m.—for the daily dry-and-grind process to start processing all of my scraps. I was also able to set the bin to lock for safety reasons, as the heating plate inside gets incredibly hot (reaching a maximum temperature of roughly 257 degrees Fahrenheit) while it’s on. You can also override your schedule and turn the machine on instantly via the app if you ever have to.

After over three weeks of overall use, the app tracked everything I added, which came out to over 45 pounds in that time period.

When it was time to ship the food grounds back to Mill, I simply went into the app and selected a pickup time that worked for me that week, and dumped the grounds into a provided zipper-lock plastic bag that went into a prepaid USPS box.

What we like about the Mill Food Recycler

It effectively reduces food waste of all kinds

The Mill does exactly what it says on the box: It can pulverize scraps that many other machines can’t handle, including small bones, avocado and mango pits, and whole banana peels with no chopping or prepping required.

I have a backyard compost bin in my yard, and I’m used to chopping food up to speed up decomposition. So I was excited to push the limits of the Mill and see what it could handle without much preparation.

I often worried that bones or pits would hurt the machine, but the next morning, they were completely demolished and the machine was unscathed. In the weeks that I used the machine, there was no food it didn’t effectively grind overnight.

(It is recommended that some foods, like corn cobs or long celery stalks, be cut into smaller pieces, but I didn’t add any of those during my testing.)

It works quietly

I set the Mill to turn on at 9 p.m. every night to give my family time to fill it with the day’s scraps.
The Mill’s website claims that it runs at roughly 42 dB—the sound of “the soft hum of a quiet library”—and I can confirm that the sound wasn’t intrusive.

The only time I heard anything louder than a hum (comparable to a quiet dishwasher) was when it would turn on and the larger food scraps were initially jostled by the turning augers.

It’s odorless

The Mill comes with a charcoal filter and it works impressively well. Throughout the time I used the Mill, we never experienced any smells coming from the machine—even when the door was left open. This is an especially alluring feature since most countertop composters are known for emitting odors.

It’s easy to use

At first, I scoffed at the fact that the Mill needs to be synced with your phone and controlled by an app; I’m a Luddite in many ways, why must the digital revolution come for my garbage?

But I’m also a stats nerd, and one of the app’s main benefits is its ability to track just how much food goes in the machine.

Month over month, your garbage output becomes an infographic that’s actually kind of fun to check in with. You can also maintain the appliance by setting its dry-and-grind schedule on the app, get updates on when you need to replace your filter, and much more. It’s also a handy resource for troubleshooting and answering questions.

What we don’t like

It runs on electricity for hours at a time

Every food dehydrator or home composter on the market requires electricity to run. For some people, it can be hard to justify owning an electrical appliance that can do the job that a compost bin can do without power.

Of course, the Mill accelerates the process and has its perks, but that comes at a cost: a slightly higher electricity bill. Using an electricity monitor, we measured the electrical output in one 24-hour period. We found the Mill used 1.55 kilowatt hours (kWh) in that time.

According to the Mill’s website, the machine uses an estimated 1 kWh/ day, so our figure was a bit higher. Based on our current electricity costs of $.1581/kWh, that means the Mill would add $7.35 to our monthly electricity bill.

That being said, Mill users can read all about the company’s climate impact, including their goals for greenhouse gas reduction, here.

The pick-up is another added cost

In addition to the cost of the Mill itself (plus the added electricity costs we just discussed), you may also need to consider paying for regular pickups to get rid of the bin’s resulting waste.

While the monthly pickups are a great option for someone with no outdoor space or compost bin to add their grounds to, it’s also a lot to pay for something you truthfully might not need each month.

In our experience as a family of four, we barely filled our box after two weeks, and my guess is that it could take closer to two months to fill up one of the provided shipping boxes with grounds. (The company claims that the dried grounds are shelf-stable and safe to store in the sealable storage bag they provide for quite a while.)

While it might be nice to ship off your grounds, not only will you find yourself storing a bag of dried grounds for weeks in your home, but you might go a month or two paying for a pickup service you don’t actually use.

A pay-as-you-go shipping plan is not currently available, but it seems like it could make more sense for many.

You need a smartphone to use it

While I was able to get over my app-rehension (sorry), it’s important to reiterate that you can’t use the machine without a smartphone and WiFi/Bluetooth connectivity. That would certainly be an issue for anyone without a smartphone or who isn’t interested in using smart devices of any kind.

It’s heavy

It has to be said: The Mill Food Recycler is really big and incredibly heavy.

While it looks like a modern, full-sized kitchen garbage can (and is attractive, as far as garbage cans go) the food bucket inside is smaller than you’d expect compared to the exterior size. That’s because it’s made of a thick, powder-coated steel that heats up while the interior steel augers in the bucket churn and grind the food scraps.

The whole thing weighs nearly 60 pounds, and the bucket that holds food scraps, and needs to be emptied, weighs 12 pounds when empty.

You likely won’t find yourself moving the machine across a room often, but be warned that it could prove challenging for some.

What owners are saying

In addition to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s stamp of approval, the Mill has earned the endorsement of chefs like Pierce Abernathy and Samin Nosrat.

The Mill also currently has 108 5-star reviews (out of 116 total reviews) on its website, with one user named Michael simply saying, “So much better than trash. So much cleaner than compost.”

Warranty

The Mill offers a few different warranty options. For users on a monthly food recycler rental plan, a limited warranty applies for the duration of the rental term. For owners of the Mill, a one-year limited warranty is available,

Should you buy the Mill Food Recycler?

Yes, if you’re willing to splurge to easily reduce food waste at home

If you can afford to buy a Mill Food recycler, it’s one of the most low-maintenance ways your family can limit greenhouse gas emissions, and it could not be simpler to use.

While some other similar machines require more work and prep (whether washing or chopping scraps, or parsing out which food scraps can even go in), our time with the Mill was free of frustration or confusion. Food scrap pickups were as simple as setting them out for our postal carrier to take them, and the machine rarely had to be emptied.

Though buying a Mill may be cost-prohibitive for many, all purchases come with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. There’s also a monthly rental option which might be valuable for anyone looking for a low-commitment way to test out this type of appliance. If reducing your carbon footprint is as easy as adding your food to the Mill, it feels like a no-brainer to get one.

If you’d prefer a machine that works more like a composter—which turns food scraps into gardening nutrients—the Reencle Home Composter may be better suited to your needs. It actually aids in the decomposition of food scraps, which can be used in home gardens in a matter of weeks.

The Mill still eliminates a huge amount of food waste all the same, and eventually will break down in your compost over many months. While both are great solutions for reducing food waste, after testing both, the Mill requires far less work and upkeep—like, so much less work.