It’s been just over a year since the Mill, the company behind a high-tech home food waste bin, was announced to the public. The company, which made an initial splash with a unique waste-to-chicken feed service and a management team with impressive smart home pedigrees, has spent much of the past year shipping to initial customers and working on partnerships with local municipalities in Washington and Arizona to integrate their product into places with limited curbside composting pickup.
And, starting last month, the company began allowing customers to purchase the Mill bin, adding a new option for a product that had previously only been available as part of a monthly subscription fee option. Before, customers had to pay a $33-a-month subscription service to Mill that included the home bin and the Mill grounds pickup service. Now, they have the option to purchase the Mill bin for $999 a year ($899 with promotion), which gets them the bin, a year of Mill essentials like charcoal filter refills and parts and maintenance, the option to opt into Mill pickups, and a 12-month warranty.
Where the company works with local pickup partners, plan options may be slightly different, according to Mill. Today, that primarily applies to the Phoenix market, where the company has partnered with a local compost pickup company called R.City. This Phoenix business makes a business out of picking up residential food waste and using the compost to regenerate the soil on its farm in South Phoenix.
I’ve been trialing the Mill myself, and I have to say the device works really well. I’ve tried the grounds pickup service, and it was as easy as advertised. However, since I prefer to put the grounds into the ground, buying the machine probably makes the most sense for me in the long term. That said, I imagine most folks might balk at coughing up almost a grand for a high-tech machine to manage food waste.
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