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The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that more food reaches landfills than any other single material via our everyday trash, constituting 24 percent of municipal solid waste. That’s a lot of uneaten meals, unused ingredients and potential energy getting tossed out.
Much of this waste is generated at the manufacturing level, and we’re seeing a surge in brands like Renewal Mill, Brewer’s Foods, Trashy (formerly Pulp Pantry) and many others seeking solutions for reducing waste at the top of the supply chain. In fact, Whole Foods, Mintel and the Specialty Food Association all identified upcycling — creating new, high quality products out of surplus food or what might be considered food waste — as a key trend in food production and consumption in 2024.
Grocery stores, the next link in the chain, are also stepping up to the plate with smarter stocking based on supply and demand and connections with local food recovery services like Too Good to Go. Schools and businesses as well are working with organizations like StopWaste, the Edible Communities 2022 Sustainability Award winner.
When it comes to diverting food waste at home, adoption rates are slowly growing while outlets and end uses are diversifying.
We recently spoke with Harry Tannenbaum, co-founder and president of Mill*, the developer of a food waste-recycling system for use in the home that turns food scraps into dry grounds to feed farms or gardens. “Nobody wakes up and says, ‘Ah, it’s a beautiful day to waste some food,’” he joked. Then he continued, “It doesn’t make environmental sense, it doesn’t make economic sense, but then when you look at it, 80-plus percent of the food that we don’t eat at home is getting incinerated or landfilled, so there’s some breakage there.”
We discussed more about how we might fill that gap and quell hesitation in adoption of food waste management at home. How you collect and dispose of food waste is now more than just putting banana peels in a bin and tossing it all into the backyard dirt pile. And why you divert food scraps can go beyond just your love of Mother Earth. Below we unpack a few of the alternatives.
It doesn’t have to divert to dirt.
Before we dig in, let’s get the language right. The term “compost” has become as ubiquitous as Kleenex or Googling in our vernacular. Many people (yours truly included) have incorrectly been using the term “compost” interchangeably with “food scraps” or “food waste.”
If you think about it like a recipe, food scraps are just one ingredient in the finished dish, or in this case, dirt. Tannenbaum noted that “if you have a pail on your countertop, you might say, “Oh, that’s my compost,” but really, it’s a pailful of apple peels and bananas that is soon to be compost. So, words carry weight, especially when we talk about a finished material […] we have a lot of reverence for composting and what compost is, and we don’t want to create any confusion there.” Mill has been trying to train consumers to refer to their product not as a compost bin but as a “food recycler.”
If you can make compost directly in your backyard, tending to the anaerobic feeding fest of microbes, and getting your hands dirty in the garden, that is a great way to create a very short life cycle for waste and get it back to producing more food quickly. However, not everyone has that option. Want to start but don’t know how? Check out classes at local garden centers or urban garden groups like Denver Urban Gardens.
Many municipalities have begun curbside collection, and community organizations are also providing pickup and food waste disposal services, and that number is growing. A recent study by Biocycle reported the number of households in the U.S. with access to food waste collection has increased by 49 percent since 2021, but there is still work to do. When curbside pickup isn’t available, some community farm partners like R. City in Arizona are enabling local-loop pathways for kitchen scraps that take them from households to small farms in the area.
Private companies are also innovating ways to use food waste beyond diverting it to dirt. For example, Mill recently received formal approval from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) to use recovered household food scraps as a chicken feed ingredient.
Tannenbaum noted, “If we think about making a loop, we always want as tight of a loop as possible. So if uneaten food is going to soil, which is growing grain, which is feeding a chicken, which is making an egg, which is going to a household, there are a lot of steps in that loop. There’s this tighter loop you can imagine where if we have uneaten food and we just give that right to a chicken then we can cut out the middle stages of growing food from that food.”
The hope is that with continued federal approval of food scraps for animal feed, consumers and companies have yet another option to keep food waste working efficiently, back in the food supply.
Consider Cost Savings
Many municipalities have implemented “Pay-as-you-throw” programs that charge households based on the amount of waste they produce and send to the curb, rather than a flat fee or tax. By diverting more waste to recycling bins or compost, households can reduce the cost of trash removal services. Plus, many systems offer recycling and composting at little to no additional cost.
Also, consider things that seem small, but can add up like the cost of buying trash bags and the time it takes you to take out the trash during the week. Plus, if you keep your food waste at home and apply it as an ingredient to make potent compost, you save money on having to purchase soil amendments or other fertilizers.
You Might Not Have a Choice
Several states have passed laws or regulations aimed at reducing food waste and diverting it from landfills, making it a mandate, not an option. California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island and others, including most recently Washington state, have taken legislative or regulatory action to reduce food waste and promote alternative methods of disposal. Most have implementation tiers and rules that impact municipalities, businesses and individual households.
In Washington, starting in 2026, businesses that produce 96 gallons of organics per week must arrange for organic materials management service, and, more immediately, local governments also must begin providing organics collection to all single-family residents. In three years, collection will be mandatory.
Other states and cities are beginning to consider and adopt similar policies. ReFED has a great resource that shows where policies stand in different states.
Adopting a habit of separating food waste from your general trash, like you do now for recycling, is something you might want to consider doing because it’s the right thing to do for the planet and may become mandatory. Plus, it can be a fun way to educate kids, neighbors or friends. Check out our lessons and resources geared specifically toward kids (and kids at heart!) here.
And it doesn’t have to be messy, smelly or insect attracting. Most collection programs provide bins or buckets with sturdy lids, or you can find some beautiful options that match your home decor. Of course, there are food waste dehydrating appliances like Mill’s that eliminate smell, reduce volume and allow for shelf-stable storage until you can find a home for it.
While the biggest lift to reduce food waste will need to come from the top of the supply chain, we can collectively do our part to divert food from landfills from the comfort of our kitchen, and for reasons that will feed our wallets, community action and even a few chickens!
Tannenbaum summed it up well, “Do what’s best for you as long as it’s not in a landfill.”
Photos courtesy of Mill.
*Edible Communities was provided a Mill bin to test out prior to this interview.
