Rare Mill kitchen bin deal: Save $125 on the at-home food recycler

SAVE $125: Through Sept. 1, the Mill food recycling bin is $125 off during Mill’s Labor Day sale — get it for $874 instead of its usual $999.

As a shopping reporter, it’s a rare W when your favorite product that you’ve ever tested goes on sale. It’s the cherry on top that’s usually needed to convince someone to buy it and see if it’ll change their life, too.

The most game-changing item in my arsenal is the Mill kitchen bin, which is currently $125 off during Mill’s Labor Day sale (I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Mill on sale before this). With the discount, you can bring the Mill food recycler home for $874 instead of its usual $999.

The Mill kitchen bin is slightly different from other at-home composters. Instead of creating actual decomposed organic material (with science that involves worms), Mill is simply dehydrating your food scraps, milling them down into an odorless material that resembles soil. When I say odorless, I mean it — Mill literally doesn’t smell, and is such a glorious alternative to letting old food stink up the actual trash can. Mill holds all of your daily plate scraps and old fridge leftovers, turning it to food grounds silently overnight. Unlike traditional compost, you can put meat, most dairy, and even small amounts of desserts into Mill.

A typical Mill day: Egg shells, old leftover takeout, stale goldfish, and an apple core.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Mill can even take the wet food that my cats left in their bowls.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

However, the most unique thing about Mill is that it offers to deal with your food grounds for you. If you don’t have a garden, you don’t really have much to do with the “compost” that countertop composters like Lomi and Reencle produce. Mill solves that glaring issue through a mail-back program: With a subscription, you’ll get free pre-labeled boxes in which you’ll pack up your finished food grounds to ship back to Mill. Then, Mill uses the grounds as a base for — wait for it — chicken feed. I’ve been using my Mill bin for about two years, and was recently notified that my Mill usage has diverted 500 pounds of food waste from a landfill, instead feeding farm chickens that were going to need to eat, anyway.

So far, the only potential source of hesitation I’ve really been able to pinpoint with Mill is how much it costs. It gets especially pricey when you factor in the mail-back pickup plan, which adds another $194 annually. But think about it this way: Mill’s Labor Day discount just about covers an entire year of the pickup subscription.