R.City, a local farm in the Phoenix Metro, and Mill, the makers of  in-home food-recycling technology, are teaming up to bring a new household food waste reduction service to the Valley.

Starting Wednesday, Nov. 15, Phoenix-area residents can sign up for the R.City x Mill service to receive a Mill kitchen bin — which eliminates the work of home composting by drying and grinding food scraps overnight so they don’t smell or spoil — and access to the R.City pickup service and farm, where the kitchen scraps will be used to cultivate soil and grow fresh produce.

The new offering combines Mill’s technology with the community impact of local farming.

How the R.City x Mill service works:

• Phoenix-area residents sign up at mill.com/rcity. The all-in service costs $35 per month and includes the Mill kitchen bin, R.City pick-up service, unlimited odor filter refills, support, and free finished compost up to four times per year.

• Customers add kitchen scraps to their Mill kitchen bin daily, which dries and grinds them overnight. Mill can handle all the food people don’t eat, including bones, pits, meat, and dairy. The bin transforms kitchen scraps into food grounds: a dry, shelf-stable material that doesn’t smell, with a consistency more like coffee grounds.
• Once the Mill bin fills up (which takes 3-4 weeks), R.City will pick up the dry grounds and use them on R.City farmland to grow fresh, seasonal produce — including varieties of squash, okra, kale, eggplant, cucumbers, carrots, and microgreens — that customers can enjoy as part of a monthly Farm Box delivery.
• With a 30-day free trial, customers can find out if the service is a good fit. R.City has been providing composting services and local produce across the Valley for 10 years.

Each year Arizona sends about 1.7 million tons of food to the landfill, according to a press release (estimated to be the top state for wasting food in the nation). A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 58% of total methane emissions from landfills comes from wasted food.

“When I set out to build R.City over 10 years ago, my goal was to connect households with small local farms through a food waste collection service, and this new partnership with Mill makes it even easier for more people to get involved with almost no effort,” J.D. Hill, R.City co-founder and CEO, stated.

Mill was recently listed as one of TIME Magazine’s Top Inventions of 2023.