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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

composting

Mill, Maker of a High-Tech Home Food Waste Bin, Adjusts Plans and Enables Purchase Option

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.

Smart Composters Are Heading to Retail, But Will Consumers Bite?

Earlier this month, Costco shoppers in select cities across California and Washington State may have stumbled upon a product demo for an item called Lomi. This white countertop appliance, roughly the size of a sewing machine, sat atop a table adorned with a tablecloth, with boxes stacked high just behind.

The images on the tablecloth hinted at the machine’s purpose – perhaps it was a pressure cooker? An air fryer, maybe? The only way to truly discern the machine’s function was to request a demo from one of the beaming representatives or squint and read the sign that proclaimed “Lomi, Smart Waste Composter, $449.99”.

Don’t get me wrong – The very presence of a compost machine at Costco built to help food scraps avoid the landfill is a good thing, a possible sign that better management of food waste is inching toward more mainstream acceptance. But I still had to wonder: will consumers bite on a machine whose main function is to process food waste into something that can be used as fertilizer?

How Big Is Home Composting?

The answer to that question may lie in how many people want to compost their food scraps but don’t currently have an easy way to do it or access to a curbside compost service.

Approximately a quarter of US citizens aged 30 to 59 years own a compost bin in their homes. That number dips to 14% for those over the age of 60, and rises slightly to 32% for those under 30. One reason for these relatively low numbers is that only 27% of households in the US have access to curbside compost pickup. Curbside pickup is crucial because, unless someone is an avid home gardener, they likely have little need for home-generated compost. By offering curbside compost pickup, local municipalities make the diversion of food scraps as simple as recycling your cans and bottles or disposing of your garbage.

However, with a home compost appliance, anyone can compost food in their kitchen and either sprinkle it on their garden or discard the processed scraps into a patch of soil on the side of their yard. Some products, like the Mill, offer a pickup service for processed food scraps (which they turn into chicken feed) via mail-in packages.

But Will Consumers Bite?

All of this brings us back to the question of how many people would be willing to buy a home composting appliance. Past studies indicate that a majority of consumers are open to using home composting services if they’re readily available, but most aren’t prepared to pay extra for a curbside pickup service. And even when folks say they will compost if access is available, in practice, they don’t always follow through.

However, I suspect that these products target a different type of consumer: the home composter with a purpose. This includes the home gardener looking to create their own compost and the food waste warrior looking for a way to reduce their carbon footprint. For those that fit one or both of these descriptions, they would likely welcome a Lomi or another smart home composter into their kitchen.

That is if they can afford one. The Lomi is $449 for the basic option, plus the extra cost to periodically buy the compost pods with microorganisms that speed up the process of breaking down the food. The Vitamix FoodCycler FC 50 costs $349, plus the cost of filters every couple of months. The Mill, whose makers prefer it not to be referred to as a composter because they turn the scraps into animal feed (though we still categorize them as composter), charges a monthly subscription of $33 for the machine and the pickup service for the processed food grounds.

None of these are cheap, especially for a fairly new product category like smart composters, which is probably why Lomi felt the need to start sending demo teams into markets in California and Washington to show people what these products are all about. When I walked up to the Lomi table and asked them about the product, the demo leader was enthusiastic and let me know how to use it.

In the end, I think this market will be an interesting one to watch, in part because it’s so new. It will take some time to teach consumers the benefits of these products, and once they do, we will learn just how many folks are willing to pay for a machine to process their food scraps.

Lomi, Unboxed: A First Look at The Lomi Smart Food Waste Composter

I find food tech fascinating – especially the products and solutions that have a shot at fixing a real problem in our food system. Tackling issues like food waste, food insecurity, nutrition, and accessibility, technology can give us the tools to change habits and systems.

But, I admit I haven’t always adopted tech in my own home that has made a huge change in our own food habits outside of our beloved sous vide, and nothing that stuck when it came to food waste. With growing kids, our grocery bills keep increasing, but I throw out more food on busy weeks than I’d ever like to admit.

Composting at home has never been an easy or…neat endeavor; we’ve tried several times, using smaller receptacles to collect food scraps to bring out to a larger pile. But no matter what, we abandoned our efforts for lack of time and patience. One year, we even subscribed to a service that would drop off nutrient-dense compost soil for us to use in our vegetable garden. We paid someone for THEIR broken-down food scraps — and it turns out, nutrient-rich, locally harvested, hand-delivered compost is not cheap.

“I just want a Keurig machine….but instead of K-cups, you put all your food scraps in and that’s it!” I complained to my family.

Cut to me coming across an article last summer on the new Lomi food composter – made by sustainable tech company Pela and pre-ordering one. Several months later, this showed up on my doorstep:

The Lomi is meant to be a smart kitchen countertop device, and it takes up a bit less space than a KitchenAid mixer, so we’ve made room for it on the counter above our trash and recycling. It is designed to be a mostly “set it and forget it” appliance, not requiring hand stirring like traditional home compost piles. Reviews rave about how quiet the machine is as it churns waste into nutrient-rich fertilizer in less than a day (and regular dirt in just 3 hours.)

The machine also ships with LomiPods, small bioorganic tabs that Lomi recommends using as an accelerator, especially if the compost will be used as a soil enhancer in a garden or landscaping. The pods are placed right on top before a cycle is run with 50 mL of water.

With seemingly easy instructions for regular operation and daily use only involves learning what can and can not be tossed in for composting, we plan to have our nine and four-year-old kids learn alongside us. We’re expanding our vegetable garden this spring and summer, too, so they’ll be able to see how the food we eat can be used to grow even more food.

One aspect of the Lomi I’m excited about is it’s the first traditional compost or dehydrator appliance to accept some bioplastics, including compostable plates and bioplastic utensils (a full list of approved items can be found here.) This is a cool feature and gives us another reason to stick to a composting habit. I also think this feature may encourage Lomi households to purchase more biodegradable household goods now that they have a more direct method to discard the materials.

We are already using our Lomi and will have a full review up with videos in a few weeks – stay tuned.

Connected Compost: Vitamix Launches an At-Home Device to Turn Food Scraps Into Soil Nutrients

Vitamix is the latest appliance-maker to address the issue of food waste in the consumer kitchen. The company today announced the launch of its Vitamix FoodCycler FC-50, a device that turns food scraps into additives for soil consumers can then use in their gardens. 

The device itself is compact enough to fit on a kitchen countertop. As the explainer video below shows, food scraps go into a portable bucket, which, when full, goes into the FoodCycler device. The user then simply attached the lid and hits the power button, and the device agitates the scraps into a compound that can be used as soil additive:  

Introducing the Vitamix® FoodCycler® FC-50!

Vitamix says the entire process can be done in four to eight hours, and works on not just produce but also meat and dairy items. A carbon filter built into the device gets rid of methane gases and odors.

The device is available now for $399.95, including a three-year warranty. 

Vitamix is positioning the device as an alternative to composting, which remains challenging to a lot of consumers. At-home compost piles require quite a bit of time and maintenance. They can also attract rodents, and most guides tell you to avoid putting meat and fatty foods in your pile (see: rodents). Some cities provide bins for compost scraps that are picked up on a weekly basis just like trash or recycling, but that’s not yet a widespread practice outside major cities.

U.S. households waste roughly 76 billion pounds of food per year. And with more people now staying home to cook and eat, it wouldn’t be surprising if that number went up in the future.

The key is to help consumer break longstanding behaviors and habits around simply throwing scraps in the garbage bin or down the drain, and the painstaking nature of traditional composting is not likely to do that on a widespread basis. The seeming ease-of-use of Vitamix’s latest device could be instrumental in helping consumers change some of those behaviors.

Startup Says its Spoons and Forks Compost in as Little as 10 Days

No offense to the humble spoon (after all, this site is named after it), but it’s not as necessary for modern American diets than its pointier sibling, the fork.

And although there’s been some innovation in terms of environmentally friendly disposable spoons in the form of Planeteers’ edible spoon, there are few options for plastic fork replacements that don’t destroy the Earth. Startup TwentyFifty aims to change that with its fork, which founder Zack Kong, a bioengineering graduate from the University of California San Diego, said is “the first compostable fork in the world that’s similar in function to plastic and wooden forks.”

The difference between TwentyFifty’s technically edible products — which currently include forks and spoons but will eventually encompass chopsticks, stirrers and straws — is its patent-pending manufacturing process that compresses wheat flour, soy flour, corn flour and water into strong utensils that can withstand higher temperatures. Essentially, TwentyFifty’s spoons won’t melt soaking in a bowl of hot soup for 30 minutes. Due to the nature of the ingredients of the utensils, the company says they will break down in a backyard compost pile in as little as 10 to 30 days, while competing compostable products need to be broken down in industrial plants.

“The other benefit of this product is not just the compostability, but it’s also an organic fertilizer,” said Albert Liu, a TwentyFifty board member and business advisor. “When these utensils compost, they add 2.7 cents worth of fertilizer to the soil. We use grains to make the utensils, then they go back into the earth to help grow more grains.”

The big hurdle for the company now is cost, with retail price per utensil around 50 cents each, wholesale at 25 cents and bulk at 15 cents. That’s hugely expensive compared to plastic, which could be as cheap as pennies per utensil. TwentyFifty anticipates prices to drop to 5 to 10 cents as it scales up and automates its production line, which will allow it to produce 10,000 to 20,000 units a day. 

TwentyFifty’s target market isn’t individual consumers, however, who could just use silverware. Rather, it’s aiming to partner with universities and municipalities. Liu said the company has a vendor agreement with UC San Diego, and has partnerships in place with Malibu, Santa Monica and San Francisco, which have all placed bans on single-use plastics. The utensils can also be found at a number of California cafes and yogurt shops.

Earlier this year, the New Food Economy found that so-called compostable bowls frequently used by Chipotle and Sweetgreen actually contained “forever chemical” PFAs, which as their name suggests, don’t break down. Meanwhile, plastic pollution continues to be a global threat. So if TwentyFifty’s utensils break down like the company claims, and more environmentally friendly alternatives become available, progress can be made toward preventing future waste.

Zume Inc Acquires Pivot Packaging, Launches Plant-based Alternative to Plastic Food Containers

Zume Inc announced today that it is launching a new plant-based packaging system that rivals plastic in both use and cost. The new compostable food container technology comes via the acquisition of Pivot Packaging, and Zume will open a 70,000 sq. ft. manufacturing plant in Southern California to create the packaging. This is Zume’s first acquisition and terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The fact that Zume is getting into the manufacturing of sustainable packaging isn’t a huge surprise. The company has always been on a mission to increase efficiency throughout its food production through robots, data-driven logistics, high-tech appliances, and applying its knowledge to other restaurants.

The addition of making and selling its own eco-friendly packaging extends the control over their product further down the delivery stack, provides another source of revenue, and comes at a time when there is a definite anti-plastic sentiment rising around the globe

Zume packaging works with a number of different fiber products like bagasse (sugarcane fiber), bamboo, wheat, and straw. According to Zume, Pivot’s technology allows these fibers to be molded in a way that acts like plastic, and at scale, is at a price parity with plastic (more on that in a moment). After use, the Zume Packaging is fully compostable.

This isn’t the first time Zume has gotten into the packaging game. In 2016, Zume launched its Pizza Pod, which was made with sugarcane and developed with Pivot. This new packaging is a part of Zume Source, the division of the company that deals with inputs (ingredients). The other divisions of Zume are Zume Culinary, which includes Zume Pizza, and Zume Foward, which handles all of the logistics, trucks and appliances.

Plastic packaging is a huge problem that the world is (slowly) waking up to. Various cities, states and countries around the world are banning various forms of single-use plastics like straws and grocery bags. But the problems in combating plastic are that it works, it’s cheap and it’s already manufactured at scale.

I spoke with Zume Co-Founder and CEO, Alex Garden, who said Zume Packaging alleviates those problems. First, Garden said that Zume Packaging achieves price “parity” with plastic at scale. He didn’t fully explain exactly what metrics he was using, what the actual cost of Zume Packaging is or how he was defining scale, but said customers large and small would be able to afford it.

Zume Packaging will be available to Zume customers around the world. In addition to the Southern California plant, Zume is opening up manufacturing facilities in India and China. Zume Packaging is available to Zume Culinary customers and those customers would be making announcements about their use of the product over the coming months.

One of the reasons Zume is able to make both the Pivot acquisition and aggressively ramp up the manufacturing of its new packaging is because it got a $375 million investment from Softbank towards the end of last year.

Zume isn’t alone in re-thinking traditional packaging. The Loop is a partnership among a number of different CPGs like Pepsi and Unliver to ship products in re-useable containers. And over in the UK, grocery chain Waitrose introduced compostable packaging for its ready to eat meals in May. Israeli startup TIPA has also created fully compostable, flexible, plastic-like packaging.

We’re all for any company fighting plastic waste here at The Spoon, and we are interested to see how Zume Packaging stacks up against plastic.