Mill

With a devastating start to the year here in Los Angeles, it was energizing to be in Phoenix this week among dedicated sustainability leaders at GreenBiz25. As a former CSO myself, now turned climate tech investor, I’ve come to appreciate the essential link between climate leadership & technology innovation. Big challenges need bold solutions – and I get to assure today’s CSOs that these solutions at our fingertips. I loved hearing from inspiring climate leaders who are proving that sustainability isn’t a company’s side hustle—it’s the main event: 🚗 Spencer Reeder at Audi, who reminded us that Audi launches their final new ICE vehicle in 2026, broke down how embedding an internal carbon price drives meaningful change across their NA operations, such as purchasing SAF. I kept thinking about how our investments are poised to help a company like Audi achieve its ambitions. Whether in AIRCO, proving that fossil-fuel-free flight isn’t a pipe dream, or Breathe Battery Technologies, using software-driven optimizations to speed up EV battery charging, we are providing the necessary capital to answer the call of today’s net-zero needs. 🧴 Marissa (Pagnani) McGowan at L’Oréal highlighted why making sustainability a core part of best-selling products, rather than treating green as a niche offering, is key to success. This is exactly why we back companies like Safi & Epoch Biodesign, helping companies meet their goals to slash virgin plastic. Safi is juicing the market for recycled material while Epoch has developed enzymes to break down plastics into reusable ingredients, eliminating waste + reducing costs. Infinite recyclability! 🦅 Aileen Lerch at Allbirds brought the bird jokes & the vision, and I was here for it. She reinforced how the company’s efforts in materials innovation is not just a sustainability goal but core to their business strategy. That’s why we invested in a company like Dioxycle, whose air-based substitute for VAM (vinyl acetate monomer) can strip a massive chunk of emissions out of shoe production—without stripping budgets. 🔥And Mayor Kate Gallego (pictured below) brought me back to my municipal roots. Cities are laboratories of innovation, and she had cool success stories to share, including her city’s partnership with Mill! Mill has invented an enjoyable way to divert food from landfills, solving a major liability & cost center for cities. Last month as I helped my 7yo fill her backpack with stuffies as we evacuated our home (we are so lucky that our Hollywood Hills neighborhood was spared), climate change became more personal than ever before. Yet, at Lowercarbon I’ve never been more optimistic that we have the tools to meet the moment better, faster, cheaper. The key is scaling these solutions quickly. If you want to learn more about our incredible portfolio in clean energy, food & ag, industrial materials, chemicals, built environment, or carbon removal, let’s chat! Because the future doesn’t build itself.

At Mill, our mission is to keep food out of the landfill and, today, we are excited to announce an important milestone in pursuit of this mission: a first-of-its-kind collaboration between Mill and the City of Phoenix in support of the City’s goals to divert 50% of wasted food from landfills by 2030. Wasted food is not only bad for the environment, it’s a huge waste of money and resources—to the tune of $9.5 billion in Arizona. By pairing Mill’s award-winning food recycler with monthly food grounds pick-ups, composting, and seasonal Farm Boxes from local farm R.City, we’re making it easy for Phoenix to prevent food waste, feed local soil and save money. We’re already making an impact: 🌱 Mill’s unique measurement tools around wasted food—including an in-device measurement system, in-app feedback reporting, and customizable quarterly reports– give us an accurate understanding of the amount of food diverted from landfill. What we found is that the average Mill+R.City household in Phoenix diverts over twenty times as much food from going to waste as the average American household (per EPA data). 🌱The City of Phoenix is leading the way in combating food waste with the nation’s largest deployment of Mill food recyclers (25+!) across local government buildings. "Having Mill food recyclers in nearly every breakroom of the City Hall Campus is a great way to engage staff in efforts to achieve our food waste diversion goals," said Amanda Jordan, MSUS, Phoenix's Circular Economy Project Manager. "We hope to lead by example as we encourage our residents to find better ways to repurpose food waste and scraps." https://lnkd.in/g2z_G_s6

With World Food Day right around the corner, we are proud to launch the Food Waste Futures Fellowship Program at Arizona State University in partnership with World Wildlife Fund and Incite.org to address food waste at its roots—through education. As part of this yearlong program, an inaugural cohort of 10 K–12 educators across Title I schools in the Phoenix metropolitan area are incorporating food systems sustainability and food waste reduction into their curriculum. They, along with their students, will be creating a Mill Food Recycling Educators Guide (an extension of the WWF Food Waste Warriors educational toolkit) using Mills in their classrooms. We cannot wait to learn from them. https://lnkd.in/gjqYyyWR

The best chefs in the world know that food waste is a challenge—and an opportunity. They inspire us to think creatively about what’s often left on the cutting board, and how it can be reimagined into something unique, delicious and impactful. To highlight the importance of preparing food with care, we are proud to partner with New York’s celebrated chefs from top restaurants across the city – including Bar Contra, Corima, Le Crocodile, The Musket Room, Loring Place and more – for the first-ever Make Food, Not Waste Restaurant Week. From Monday, September 30th through Sunday, October 6th, 12 incredible NYC restaurants –  will set the standard for no-waste cooking—committing to producing zero food waste with Mill’s help in the kitchen and offering a special dish that showcases their perspective on no-waste cooking. Menu highlights include: ✨Fried Plantain Panna Cotta with curry ice cream, caramel made from plantain peel, peanut praline snow and a rye peanut crunch by Chef Camari Mick at The Musket Room ✨ Kampachi Crudo, with mushrooms, fermented husk cherry salsa, celtuce and chicharron furikake by Chef Fidel Caballero of Corima, who saves the bones to create a corn husk dashi and heads and collars to use in their empanadas. ✨ Caramelized Bread Pudding French Toast with Stone Fruit Sherbet Bread pudding made with leftover milk bread that is then sliced and caramelized.  Served with sherbet made with stone fruit “seconds” by Dan Kluger of Greywind. Grab a table. Enjoy the meal. https://lnkd.in/gppk5uBm

Driving awareness of the problem of food waste—and the actions we can all take to combat it—is one of the core ambitions at Mill. That’s why we’re excited to share that Mill and our co-Founder and CEO Matthew Rogers were featured in the new Netflix documentary series, “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates,” in the “Can We Stop Global Warming?” episode. We’re proud to share our story alongside other climate pioneers such as Brimstone Concrete and the youth plaintiffs in Held v. Montana, which marked the first time a U.S. court declared a government’s constitutional duty to protect people from climate change. Check out the series streaming now on Netflix Watch it here https://lnkd.in/eVsHGF6E

Driving awareness of the problem of food waste—and the actions we can all take to combat it—is one of the core ambitions at Mill. That’s why we’re excited to share that Mill and our co-Founder and CEO Matthew Rogers were featured in the new Netflix documentary series, “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates,” in the “Can We Stop Global Warming?” episode. We’re proud to share our story alongside other climate pioneers such as Brimstone Concrete and the youth plaintiffs in Held v. Montana, which marked the first time a U.S. court declared a government’s constitutional duty to protect people from climate change. Check out the series streaming now on Netflix Watch it here https://lnkd.in/eVsHGF6E

“Surveying all possible lazy man’s options for conscientious food disposal, the Mill looks like the top choice for the moment.” - straight from Wilson Rothman in the The Wall Street Journal Proud of this piece and what we’re building: an easy solution to one of our dumbest climate problems.  Check it out ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/guWddpVj

Following the announcement of the Biden-Harris Administration’s National Strategy to Reduce Food Loss and Waste and Recycle Organics, we’re excited to release Mill’s inaugural data report, which shows a first-of-its-kind look at consumer food waste behavior and represents the largest, most accurate look at food waste behavior in homes ever measured. Our first year of data shows unequivocally that Mill is working, both at driving consumer behavior changes and presenting new opportunities for people and communities to save money and prevent waste.  Here are a few of our findings that tell the story: 📉 The amount households throw out decreases the first few months they have Mill—by over 20% over the first four months—and then stabilizes. 🥕 In a study of our customers, over one in three respondents shared that using Mill decreased the amount of food waste they generated as they cooked and shopped differently. 💫 And now, with Mill, 73% of respondents reported putting *no* food into the trash, compared to 8% before they had Mill. This data has important implications for researchers, food waste advocates, and government leaders seeking precise ways to measure and impact residential food waste behavior and increase organics diversions efforts. We’re excited to help these communities take data-informed action against the urgent priority of tackling food waste. https://lnkd.in/gf9kpNFu

"With Mill, Rogers is aiming for something even bigger: a radical reshaping of the way people think about and dispose of the food they don’t or can’t eat. What we’re doing today isn’t working, says Rogers: ”95% of food waste is still going to landfill. This is solvable. This is a tractable problem. Like, throwing food in the trash, we could just not do that.” As a company, Mill is engaging in a multipronged effort to transform how food waste is discarded, how it’s collected, and how it’s diverted from a heavily polluting destiny in a landfill. Rogers is using the lessons he learned at Apple and from running Nest...to try to shift consumers and governments toward a new model. The slick, food-chomping garbage bin he’s helped create could be the thing that makes such an immense change possible" - the latest on Mill in Fast Company Check it out https://lnkd.in/gCiyhV_w