Anika Begay
I don’t do it like composting.
I realize this is practically heretical, since I live just outside of environmentally conscious Portland, Oregon, but I’d rather not have a container of slimy, rotting kitchen scraps on my countertop. It attracts fruit flies and leaves my house smelling like federal prison prunes, especially in the heat of summer.
Instead, my family of three has relied on sink garbage disposals, which isn’t great. Our septic tank repairman is adamantly against them, and garbage disposals are also a bad idea for people without septic systems, because the waste ends up in waterways. Throwing food in the kitchen garbage ultimately leads to the local landfill, where uneaten food makes up 24 percent of municipal solid waste. Its decomposition releases dangerous methane gas.
To combat this, many cities have their own composting programs. My rural suburb doesn’t, so I’m forced to choose between a normal-smelling kitchen and actively contributing to global warming. That’s why I was particularly interested in Mill, an odorless, fully automatic food recycling bin designed by Matt Rogers, a former Apple engineer and co-founder of Nest, a pioneer of smart thermostats.
My family, who cooks a lot at home, tested the Mill for six weeks, hooking it up to an electric meter to test its output and running costs, and feeding it as much food scraps as possible (including sauces, hundreds of eggshells, and a particularly irritating batch of melon rinds), to see if this particularly expensive container was worth adding to our household.
From the ground up
There’s no denying that at 50 pounds, about 27 inches tall, and 16 inches wide, the Mill takes up a fair amount of space. Even in my fairly spacious kitchen, finding a spot to place the Mill where it’s accessible and out of the way, and within a couple feet of an outlet, was a challenge. For those with limited counter space, the Mill’s floor-standing position may give it an edge over countertop competitors like the Lomi.
Photography: Kat Merck
