R.City, a pioneering local farm in the Phoenix metro area, and Mill, the makers of an innovative in-home food-recycling technology, are teaming up to bring a new household food waste reduction service to the Phoenix metro area. R.City and Mill are teaming up to bring a new household food waste reduction service to the Phoenix metro area.
Phoenix-area residents can sign up for the R.City x Mill service to receive a Mill kitchen bin—which eliminates the messy work of home composting by drying and grinding food scraps overnight so they don’t smell or spoil—and access to the R.City pickup service and farm, where the kitchen scraps will be used to cultivate soil and grow fresh produce. The new offering combines Mill’s innovative, easy-to-use technology with the community impact of local farming.
The new service comes at a time when consumers and government leaders are becoming more aware of the devastating effects of sending food to landfills and clamoring for more solutions to address food waste. Each year, Arizona sends about 1.7 million tons of food to the landfill while a new report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that a whopping 58% of total methane emissions from landfills comes from wasted food. Wasted food is not only a major emissions driver, it’s a waste of money: the average family of four spends $1,900 each year on food that ends up uneaten. More than 50 local government officials—including two from Arizona— signed onto a letter in late October calling on the EPA to offer more support to municipal governments to cut food waste in their communities.
The partnership between Mill and R.City also represents a new product offering from Mill as part of an expanded effort to enable local-loop pathways for kitchen scraps that support community farm partners like R.City. The initiative marks the first time people who subscribe to a private composting service—approximately 100,000 households across the United States—can participate in a program that combines the technology and design of the Mill kitchen bin with the community impact of local farming.
“When I set out to build R.City over ten years ago, my goal was to connect households with small local farms through a food waste collection service, and this new partnership with Mill makes it even easier for more people to get involved with almost no effort. I’ve been using the Mill kitchen bin myself and you have to try the bin to truly appreciate it—there is a foot pedal that opens just like a trash can, it smells good, and the bin takes weeks to fill up. This means fewer pickups, a better kitchen experience, and an easy, practical way to prevent food waste while giving back to our local community,” said J.D. Hill, Founder of R.City.
“At Mill our mission is to keep food out of landfills in a way that’s easy for people and good for our communities. The Mill kitchen bin eliminates the hard work of home composting while the full-loop service offers a non-landfill destination for kitchen scraps that gets food back to farms. We are expanding our work with government leaders and food waste collection providers across the country to offer more local pathways for Mill customers, and R.City’s deep passion for local farming and food waste prevention made them a natural first partner for us,” said Alyssa Pollack, Head of Business at Mill.