This man turned thermostats into a 3 billion business. Can he do the same for food waste?

Get the Full StoryMatt Rogers is bringing lessons from Apple and Nest to the climate-change problem hiding in your kitchen.

Inside a gadget-filled lab at an office outside San Francisco, there s a refrigerator packed with clear Ziploc bags of rotting food. It s an extreme version of the experience almost everybody s had of opening their fridge to discover mold forming on a very leftover meal or a bag of spinach that s turned into black goo. The bags are there for testing purposes they represent the typical food scraps an average household produces on a regular basis. Mill Industries, the company that owns the lab, is using them to fine-tune a unique kind of garbage bin called the Mill that can turn those rotting food scraps into chicken feed. Standing about 27 inches high, the Mill is the size of a typical kitchen garbage bin. But under its lid is a gaping mouth of metal blades that, in combination with a heated bucket, grinds and dries whatever food is added throughout the day. For a 30 monthly subscription fee, or a one-time purchase price of 999, customers can use the internet-connected device to divert their uneaten food from landfills, where it would decompose and produce a potent greenhouse gas. Instead, Mill s bin is calibrated to preserve the nutrients left in food scraps, making them easier to reuse without the climate impact.

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