Food recycling might seem like a new (ish) concept, but the purpose is one we’re all hopefully familiar with — reducing the amount of methane-generating wasted food that ends up in landfills, while also supporting soil health, building resilient food systems, promoting resource conservation and so much more. 

Food recycling is one solution to food loss and waste. Two others are prevention and rescue, which encompasses donation and upcycling. Prevention means buying only what you need, and using all of what you buy. (Think leftovers!) Rescue means recovering edible food that would otherwise be thrown away and feeding people with it. This could look like donating to food banks or community centers, or turning scraps into other food products. It could be shared with your neighbors.  Finally, there’s recycling. Read on to learn what this term means and how you can do it in your home.  

What is food recycling? 

Food recycling is a process that ensures food that can’t be eaten goes to one of the beneficial end uses outlined by the EPA:  to feed animals, to feed soil, or  anaerobic digestion, which generates energy.

1. Animal feed: After feeding humans, feeding animals is the best use for food you can’t or don’t eat. 

2. Feeding soil: Compost is nutrient-rich organic matter that essentially feeds soil. It’s created by the process of composting, or the controlled aerobic, biological decomposition of biodegradable materials. Recycled food can go into a home compost pile as greens or sent to a city-run program that takes it to a commercial-scale composting facility. 

3. Anaerobic digestion: This is a biological process in which food scraps are set up to  decompose in an anaerobic environment (one without oxygen) to create biogas. Generally, this is done in an industrial or agricultural facility, so you’d contribute to this beneficial end use by participating in a city-run drop off or pick up program, if available. The biogas that’s created is either used to create electricity or to be processed into renewable natural gas. The digestate, the leftovers from anaerobic digestion, is ideally composted and added to the soil as compost so nothing goes to waste. 

Using a food recycler

A food recycler is a device or appliance designed to increase diversion of food scraps from landfill by turning them into shelf-stable, nutrient-rich grounds that can be composted, fed to animals, used in anaerobic digestion, or turned into a soil amendment. What truly defines a food recycler is that it connects households to one of the mentioned beneficial end uses. Mill is the first food recycler that provides a direct pathway to turn your food scraps into food for chickens or greens for compost. You don’t have to use a food recycler in order to recycle your food, but using one can open up new pathways to beneficial end uses that aren’t otherwise available to you. Let’s say your city doesn’t offer an organic waste collection program yet, and you don’t have a backyard for composting. A Mill food recycler allows you to recycle your food scraps into dry grounds and — via our optional pickup program — get them to farms to feed chickens. 

Even if you do have a beneficial end use available to you — like a backyard compost pile or a city-run organics pickup service — you can still use your Mill grounds as part of that process. For example, you can wet down the dry grounds from Mill and add them to your backyard compost pile, where, thanks to their reduced size, they’ll decompose more quickly than food scraps you might toss in whole. 

Why recycle your food?

Reducing methane emissions is one (big) reason to keep food out of landfills, but it isn’t the only one. 

Reduce methane emissions 

Uneaten food — an overwhelming amount of which comes from residential homes — is the most common material in landfills. When this food rots, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than CO₂. 

Food waste is responsible for 58% of methane emissions from landfills. Food breaks down pretty quickly in landfills and generates a lot of methane, which is bad news. If you start recycling your food, you can reduce methane emissions — as well as your own carbon footprint — and make a positive impact on the environment. 

Get food back into the food system

An estimated 38% of America’s food supply is wasted every year. When you opt to recycle your food, especially in a way that either feeds people or animals, you’re returning food back into the food system. And that’s the next best thing you can do if you can’t feed people by donating or upcycling. 

Re-use energy & nutrients

When food rots in landfills, we waste more than the food itself. We also waste the nutrients, energy, and resources that went into creating it. 46% of our habitable land is used for agriculture, and about 30% of that land is used to grow food that’s never eaten. Recycling uneaten food ensures that the resources used to create that food don’t just disappear into the ether (or worse, turn into methane). Instead, you reintroduce the energy and nutrients back into the soil, animals, and people around you. 

Industrial-scale facilities can also help turn food scraps into renewable energy, creating clean energy sources that can be used by farmers, cities, and even alternative fuel vehicles. 

It’s the way of the future

Food recycling is good for the planet and, in many places, it’s becoming the law. In Vermont, throwing food scraps in the trash has been completely illegal since 2020. California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have enacted similar legislation. 

Make an impact with Mill

Ready to start recycling your food? Mill’s food recycler can help you avoid about a half-ton of greenhouse-gas emissions per year. Instead of filling the air with methane, your kitchen scraps go right back into the food system.

Sources:

1. United States Environmental Protection Agency: “Wasted Food Scale.” April 25, 2024. https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/wasted-food-scale

2. U.S. Department of Agriculture: “Why should we care about food waste?” https://www.usda.gov/foodlossandwaste/why

3. United States Environmental Protection Agency: “Quantifying Methane Emissions from Landfilled Food Waste.” January 22, 2024. https://www.epa.gov/land-research/quantifying-methane-emissions-landfilled-food-waste

4. In Our World Data: “Land Use.” May 2024. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

5. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: “Food wastage footprint: Impact on natural resources summary report.” 2013. https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/1694038d-98f7-40f6-be4b-98782544b9f9/content

6. United States Environmental Protection Agency: “Basic Information about Anaerobic Digestion.” June 26, 2024. https://www.epa.gov/anaerobic-digestion/basic-information-about-anaerobic-digestion

7. National Conference of State Legislatures: “Fighting Food Waste.” October 24, 2022. https://www.ncsl.org/agriculture-and-rural-development/fighting-food-waste