How Mill Turns Everyday Food Waste Into a Resource with Sydney Grier

In this episode, Cory Connors sits down with Sydney Grier, Packaging Lead at Mill, to explore how the company is tackling one of the most overlooked environmental problems: household food waste. Sydney shares her journey from studying environmental management at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to becoming a packaging engineer, and how she ended up joining Mill — then operating in stealth mode as Chewy Labs. Together, Cory and Sydney discuss how Mill's food recycler works, why composting beats landfilling, the innovative all-paper packaging Sydney designed for a 60-pound device, and what the future holds for commercial expansion into places like Whole Foods.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Sydney's path from environmental management to packaging engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
• How Mill originated from a desire to tackle food waste at the household level
• What Mill does: drying, grinding, and dehydrating food scraps to reduce volume by ~80%
• Challenges of composting access across the U.S. and how Mill fills the gap
• Mill's commercial expansion: launching nationwide in Whole Foods in 2027 at 10x home capacity
• Designing paper-based protective packaging for a 60-pound device — without styrofoam
• The value of involving a packaging engineer early in the product design cycle
• How Mill's bin is rated to withstand 200 g's of peak acceleration (equivalent to a car hitting a wall at 440 mph)
• Output options for Mill food grounds: garden spreading, local compost drop-offs, backyard chickens, or Mill's chicken feed send-back program

Resources Mentioned:

• Mill — food recycler for the home and commercial kitchens
• Whole Foods Market — Mill's first commercial partner (launching 2027)
• Mill's chicken feed program 

Contact:

• Mill
• LinkedIn: Sydney Grier 

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Transcript

0:06

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors presented by Atlantic Packaging. I'm your host, Cory Connors. In today's episode, I connected with Dana Voges with SEA ME and they are leading the charge for reusable packaging systems in Germany and now moving to the rest of Europe. I'm truly impressed with their system and hope it scales as they plan. I'd also like to thank our sponsors, 3M and Specright We couldn't do the show without them. Welcome to Sustainable Packaging. I'm so excited to have Dana Voges on. She's the project lead for circular economy and sustainability at SEA ME. How are you, Dana? I'm doing great, Cory. Thanks for having me. All the way from Germany, excited to have you on the show and wanted to celebrate the important work that you're doing in sustainable packaging. But before we get into the details of uh your business, tell us about yourself. What's your background? How'd you get into sustainable packaging? Yes, so I have uh a bit of a unique entry into the packaging world. I actually, I'm from the US originally, I'm from Colorado. And I grew up every year going to landfills on Take Your Kid to Work Day. My dad is a geotechnical engineer. And when I was a kid, he was working on cleaning up the Superfund site at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, cleaning up like mining debris and waste and hazardous waste. And they used to have a take your kid to work day where they brought all the kids in and showed you a landfill was and taught you what a liner was. And so from a young age, I understood, okay, our trash goes somewhere when we're finished with it. And then later as a teenager, I got involved with an arts group called Hot Trash based out of California that puts on trash fashion shows where everything is made out of trash on the runway. And so I actually designed Trash Fashion. for many years and was introduced through the arts then to the gyres and the great global garbage patch off the Pacific coast and some of the topics that we now deal with in circularity. And then later as a teenager, I went to Germany as an exchange student. And that was my first introduction to the German deposit system for bottles. And that was something that fascinated me. as an alternative to the landfill and the ocean patch. So understanding that there are alternatives and in Germany the reusable bottle deposit systems are working very well. And it fascinated me how normal it was in Germany to bring bottles back to the grocery store and put them in the little reversed vending machines and get your deposit back. And like there's even there's rap songs written about standing in line at the deposit machine in Germany. Like it's it's incredible how normal this is over there. And then so so circle back a couple of years. It was covid had a bit of time on my hands, read a bunch of books. And that was kind of when I was first introduced to the idea of circular economy through Kate Rayworth's book, Doded Economics and Cradle to Cradle, Michael Braungart. And then so that really clicked for me. I was like, OK. The German deposit system is a circular economic alternative to our linear based economy. And then, so I decided a couple of years ago, 2019, that I wanted to come back to Germany to study reusable packaging systems, to understand what was working in Germany and why, and try to bring that system and that model that was working to other places, be it the US or elsewhere. So that's what brought me back to Germany. And so now I've been here for about five years. I studied at the Tech. University of Berlin with a specific focus on my research on return rates. Because as when you look at the life cycle analysis data of return systems, you realize that if you have uh a returnable bottle that only comes back to the store twice, it sometimes is more harmful than a single use bottle. So this consumer behavior aspect is really important. So that's kind of my area of expertise. And then about a year ago, I joined the team at SEA ME. in Hamburg. So we'll get to that in a minute, I guess. Yeah. What a great background for sustainability. Yeah. Seeing the problem growing up as as a youth with your dad, that sounds really uh important to your development and to your progress here. So shout out to him and uh for his efforts in uh Colorado. I know about that site. One of my very best friends worked there for a long time. And uh he said it was incredible. The amount of work. that was needed to clean up that site. So uh definitely good job to all those men and women that worked hard over there. oh, I love that. I love that. And I totally couldn't agree with you more about how we need to look at what Germany is doing, what the Europeans are doing to make packaging more circular. That's so important to a future more sustainable. economy and world or circular environment. So let's talk about see me. What is it? What do do there? Yeah. So SEA ME is the brand that was founded about five, six years ago by our founder Lars. And SEA ME was founded as a reusable packaging brand for cosmetics. So it was kind of a proof of market concept to see, you know, could the same system that's working for bottles for beverages also work for shampoo or for hand soap? And so Lars launched the company as a test. Originally there were only glass bottles. So the original products were hand soap, lotion, body lotion, face creams in little jars. And then last year we also launched the PET bottle for shampoo, shower gel and conditioner, understanding that there are some contexts where glass is not feasible for safety reasons or because the labels might wash off in the shower, things like that. And so that was launched in 2000. Excuse me. So SEA ME was launched in 2019 and then Zerooo is the open pool system. So basically what we've done with SEA ME, we're now offering that to other brands that want to participate with their own products. So it's a pay per use model. So rather than having a one time cost to buy a bottle that they didn't never see again, brands pay a service fee for the use of one cycle of a bottle that then includes the reverse logistics in the cleaning and Zerooo or SEA ME handles all of the backend to bring it back to the brand for refilling. So that's the model in the nutshell. Before we get too deep into this, who came up with that name? It's really cool. Zero. Yeah. so the logo actually came before the name and the logo is a triple infinity loop and the three loops stood for the brand, the retailer and the consumer with the idea that the packaging is circling endlessly between these three stakeholders. And then they were looking for a word that could be written with three O's and so they searched for a while, they had a whiteboard with 200 options. And Mirko, one of the co-founders of the Zero System, was reading a book at the time called Zero. It was a mystery novel. And so that was where the name came from. They thought it fit really well. Hey friends, we are going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Please be sure to support them. Are you shipping with recycled corrugated? Think outside the box with 3M tape. 3M packaging tape can help you overcome your recycled corrugated challenges with confidence, making sure your boxes are sealed securely the first time, reducing downtime, and providing consistent performance. 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A platform that connects packaging knowledge with AI intelligence, giving you access to verified suppliers, real capabilities, and actionable data in one place. Take action at speed. Execute with intelligence. That's Forest. Well, it's really smart. I saw your team at Paris Packaging Week and was very blown away by what they were doing and thought, OK, this works. To me, this is a huge part of sustainable packaging moving forward is reuse. And I did want to talk a little bit more about how we get people to encourage them to actually reuse. You mentioned before that. that if it doesn't get returned more than twice, it just doesn't work. The LCA doesn't make sense, the life cycle analysis. So let's talk about, are there any glitches, anything that's causing it to not work? uh What's an issue that's like, hey, here's a cautionary tale to other people trying to do reusable systems. Yeah, okay, this is good. So you mentioned the consumer behavior challenge. And so this was the focus of my research. And this is really the hardest one to crack. And I think what makes it work in Germany is that the bottle deposit system for single use bottles was founded, I think, in the early 2000s. And so that behavior of returning a bottle to the grocery store, whether it's for recycling or reuse, for consumers, it's actually the same behavior. And the legislation for deposit return systems, when that comes first, it forces a behavior change. It forces the retailers to start collecting bottles, to set up the infrastructure. It provides the incentives. And that really, in my mind, paves the way to enable reuse systems because it makes this behavior happen already. So then by the time we say, okay, now we're going to have reusable bottles for shampoo. If I'm already in the habit of bringing bottles back to the grocery store. one more bottle doesn't really make a difference. So we talk about marginal effort. For consumers, it's actually no marginal effort once you're already in that return habit. But when you compare, so this is a pre-fill model. So you don't have to bring your own bottles to fill up at the grocery store. And that, think, is also a key distinction. You see other refill models kind of failing to scale, failing to gain traction, failing to break out of the niche of super environmentally friendly consumers. And the key differences here is that it's different if you have to remember in the beginning, like if you have to remember to bring your bottle. If I forget to bring my bottle, now I can't participate in the system. But if I am at the store and the bottle's available, I can bring it home. And then if I forget to bring it back with me to return it when it's empty, it's not a problem. I can still bring it back. the next time I come to the grocery store. So that's a key difference is when you have to rely on memory, which makes pre-fill models, I think, significantly better in terms of consumer ease of adoption. So that's the behavior change challenge. think the DRS systems are really our best friend there for looking at how do we scale this model to other countries and looking at how do we make sure that as DRS systems are implemented in other places that retailers are already thinking about, OK, We're setting it up for recycling, but someday we can also piggyback on that system to expand for reuse. means installing reverse vending machines that are compatible for single use and reuse, for example. So making sure that those infrastructure pieces are being decided now, that that's being considered for long term. Other challenges that we're facing. You know, we're really talking about transforming an entire industry. And that's brings a lot of complexity. And I like to talk about it in terms of like a roller coaster. Like, let's say I want to build a roller coaster. There's a lot of things that need to be in place in order for one person to ride a roller coaster. You have to have the context, right? People have to enjoy riding roller coasters in the place you're in. They know what a roller coaster is. There's a theme park where the roller coaster can be. You've got the track, you've got the cart, you've got the operator, and then you have the rider that comes and joins the system. And if I want to invest in the system, if I want to do it all, there's a lot of capital investment that's required, right? In Greece, we have the wash infrastructure, the return infrastructure. the return incentives, the legislative framework, the behavior change. So it's really difficult to be an expert in all of those things. And what Zerooo has done is we are focusing on one aspect of that system and making sure that it integrates with already existing infrastructure and behaviors that already are there. So it's like if we... With the roller coaster analogy, if we're just designing a new kind of car that can ride along on the same track in the same system, we're not redoing the entire thing. We're trying to build the entire thing from scratch, but we're integrating with existing systems. So I think that's been a key to solving the complexity challenge and the infrastructure challenge. Another challenge, we call it the chicken. by the way. I like that. That's really smart. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Another one that we talk about a lot is the chicken and the egg problem with retailers and brands. So, you know, if you say, hey, brand, we would like you to join our reuse system. And they say, okay, but where am I going to sell it? There has to be a retailer that's willing to also accept the packaging back. So they're waiting on the retailers to say, yes, we will participate. But then you ask the retailers and they say, wow, but the brands aren't demanding it. Why should we change our systems when The big global players aren't insisting on it. And so you have this, um, this challenge of who starts the ball rolling. And that is part of the challenge that we've also been trying to solve in bringing these stakeholders together and trying to get commitments from both sides, and bring everybody to the table to be able to take the first step together. So that's one. Another challenge is scale. costs are a big one, right? In the beginning. Setting up the wash infrastructure, like all of these things do still cost money and that means in the beginning systems are expensive. I think what has also been a big advantage that I would give as a tip to others interested in starting reuse systems is that in the beginning, the fact that we had our own brand has been a big financial advantage because the margin that we make on a bottle of hand soap, which is also positioned as kind of a premium hand soap, it's not the cheapest thing on the shelf, that margin is a lot higher than the margin we get from renting one bottle for one cycle. And so by having these parallel sources of income, that has enabled us to kind of get through the phase where our wash cycles, our wash costs were higher. And now we're getting to the point where the scale is catching up where... The wash costs for 10,000 bottles are practically the same as for 1,000 bottles. So now we're benefiting from these economies of scale to the point where we're getting to the point where we can offer prices that are matching single use prices. Wow, that's really impressive. And what, and I think that's the intention, right? Is eventually that it's a cost savings initiative as well. There's a common, common misnomer in sustainable packaging that it's always going to cost more. It's always going to be more expensive, but I totally agree with you that if we can do this correctly over the longterm, it's going to be a cost savings for the brand, a cost savings for the customer and for everyone involved, a better process. Absolutely. And there I think we can look also to what is working in Germany. So for example, in the beverage industry, the reason that they started reusing bottles in the first place was after World War II, they had material scarcity, right? So they started washing the bottles because it was cheaper to wash a bottle than to buy a new one, or they couldn't even access glass. And now we say, you know, it costs two to three cents to wash a beer bottle because they've already invested in the infrastructure. And so we know that that's the direction that we need to move in. And particularly for items that are ready are bottles. The cost savings are projected to be much higher, for example, than products that are films. So I think there was an Ellen MacArthur study that came out fairly recently that looked at which sectors have the biggest savings potential. And beyond beverage, cosmetics and personal care was actually... one of the next ones that have the biggest savings potential. I think it was like 20 % overall system costs in a scaled capacity. Yeah. Well, like you said, you got to build the roller coaster. You got to figure that out. And I think that's so important for brands and for consumers to understand. Yes, it's going to be a challenge at first, but once we figure it out together, it's going to be great for everyone because we don't have to injection mold new containers. We don't have to blow mold new bottles. You know, we don't have to form new glass every time we can just wash it. And I know there's always a concern of like how it looks after it's been cleaned and how it looks after it's rolled through the system. And you get that kind of that wear mark on the outside of the bottle. But those almost become like a sign of look at what we're doing together. You know, I think I think it's like, hey, this is great. What a great process. Don't you think people kind of see it like that? I think it depends on the product too. think like drinks are typically not thought of as like a luxury product, like a Coca-Cola bottle or a water bottle. Maybe doesn't have the same aesthetic requirements that a perfume bottle might. So there are some products that I think are are a little different. We have had this question with cosmetics, you know, how, what are we going to do about aesthetics after five rounds, 10 rounds, 15 rounds? And part of that comes down to also looking at clever design, right? Like, so with, em There are certain bottles in Germany that are designed with a small little raised ring around the outside, kind of above and below where the label would be, specifically to prevent a mark, right? So there's clever design changes that can be made. You can also think about systems, If bottles are rubbing against each other on a conveyor belt, which is where that scuffing comes from, that's one kind of automated system. But there are also systems where you've got the bottle sitting in They call it like a shoe, like in a little cozy, and that is how it moves through the conveyor belt and through the system. so there are clever ways to get around some of those aesthetic challenges. Well, that's really smart. And you could even make the whole glass bottle kind of opaque. Then it just kind of all matches. Like you said, there's lots of ways of looking at that. I did want to talk about materials. I noticed that you're using glass and plastic uh mostly. Is there a room for aluminum in this system? Or is that doesn't work because of how it can dent? This is a great question. I would say I'm material agnostic in terms of reuse systems. I have seen reuse systems in Germany working with metals, but there's a key difference. For example, you see it working with beer kegs. You see it working with gas canisters. But the key difference there is that when that beer keg or gas canister is empty, there isn't really an obvious secondary use for it at home. And some of the reuse solutions for primary packaging that I've seen have the challenge of being too keepable. And this was actually a finding in my research. I actually identified that there's a very distinct pattern that emerges that affects the incentives, like how strong of a pull the deposit incentive is. And if packaging, when it's empty, is treated as trash, then deposits are a very good incentive system. But if they are treated as a product that has a good secondary use at home, like a spray bottle or a storage container, the power of the deposit is almost entirely lost, or it becomes significantly diminished because If people want to keep it because it's useful, they now see the deposit they've paid as a price that feels legitimate. so you've seen this with Germans. They have no guilt in keeping a container if they paid a deposit, like mugs at Christmas markets. They see it as a price. So that's one challenge with metals. Another challenge is when you look at the life cycle analysis data. We talk about break even points a lot with returnable packaging. So if you take a product that was originally sold in plastic, had as a relatively low carbon footprint for production, and now we replace it with aluminum or worse stainless steel, right? I think the melting point of aluminum is like 650 degrees Celsius. I stainless steel is like 1200. Plastic is about 250 roughly. So just looking at the energy that's required to produce that bottle in the beginning, you have a much higher footprint from production, which means that if you have a higher footprint from production, you have to use it many more times in order for it to even break even with single use. And that's what I've seen is that you have these two factors of one, these bottles are more keepable, so people are not bringing them back as they should. And then you have the dual factor of it having a high upfront footprint. And so for me, really begs the question of, whether these systems will be able to get them back enough to make it environmentally worth it. And then you have the price factor in that producing a metal container tends to be more expensive. And in order for that to be a viable financial model, you have to have a higher deposit. So the deposit ideally needs to be as high or higher than the price of production so that if it doesn't come back, we can use the deposit to buy a new container to put back into the system. And if you've got deposits of $2, $5, that is a barrier to participation. All right. That's tough to make that investment as a consumer, right? It's tricky. it works maybe if it's for a coffee cup. But then again, you've got an empty coffee cup that is a functional cup at home. So there are challenges. It depends on the product and it depends on the container. Another challenge for us is actually visual inspection. So in our wash facility, there are very fancy cameras that take pictures of all of the cleaned containers. we're able to then detect whether there are residues inside that were not properly washed. And if the bottle is not transparent, we lose the ability to do that control. So there may be other solutions, but for us, that was one reason that we decided not to work with metal. And I think the last and the biggest reason is simply that for consumer goods, you know, we were looking at personal care, home care products. They typically don't come in metal containers. They typically come in glass or plastic. And so for brands and for consumers, it's a pretty big transition in terms of product functionality and aesthetics. And that's something that we hear over and over again from brands is that, you know, the least amount of change possible is best for consumers because, yeah, it just, adds too much friction in the buying process. And if consumers don't buy your reusable fancy container, your project will never scale. Right? Like that's the first barrier. If they don't sell, you're not doing reusable packaging. If they don't sell and if they don't come back, those are the two big, yeah, exactly. Yeah. eh some kind of a bag or container for people to collect these reusable containers at home? No, that's a good question. We do not. But what we've actually found is that in Germany, returnable bottle systems integrate really well with reusable bags. So the systems that Germans usually have at home, that usually they have either a bag or a crate or a box in the basement or wherever in the pantry, and that's where they put all of their empties. And then when they go to the grocery store, they bring this crate back with them. And then right at the beginning of the grocery store, usually, or on the outside, there's a spot to put all your bottles back. And now this empty bag or box is your vessel for bringing your groceries home. So it integrates very well with existing systems. So I don't think we've ever seen the need to add another container to the system for that reason. That's so interesting. You have to focus on what the consumer is used to and uh make it, like you said, a low barrier of entry, easy to do, less friction. I think that's the issue with a lot of the reusable systems we've tried here in the US is people like, what? You want me to do what? It doesn't make sense. But then we have a bottle deposit for We have 10 states with that and those states have double the return rates of the states that don't do that. And so to me, that makes perfect sense. I don't understand why we're not doing this nationally. I'm sure there's a financial issue somewhere there that I'm not aware of or somebody. Yes. Yeah. sure the plastic lobby has something to do with it. Knowing American politics. I'm sure, yeah, follow the money. huh. A hundred percent. But it's sad to me as a, as a person that cares about sustainable packaging and as an Oregonian, think we were the first state to have a bottle deposit system here in the U S and it's very successful. So I wish, I wish other States would do it. and I'm certainly pushing for that as I talk to our politicians and people with influence in the U S well, on that note, another thing to think about when passing deposit return system laws, whenever you're going to implement a reuse system, you should definitely look at what's happening already in the local context. If there is a deposit system for bottles, piggyback onto the existing system. But if you're still in the process of setting it up, It's definitely advisable to make the collection points for deposit return systems grocery stores, specifically grocery stores, because those are places that consumers are visiting every week. And the benefit for retailers for participating in a system like this is that consumers are coming into their store, they're getting their deposit back, and now you've got your deposit slip with $3, $5. And what do people do with that deposit slip? They spend it. They buy more groceries. It's a thing that brings people into stores, and that's part of the reason that we were able to get so many retailers on board, even though it's not mandated in Germany for our sector, is that they understood know that. Yeah, they understood that there was financial benefit in it for themselves. And that I think is also a big key to making reuse work is you have to find a reason for everyone to participate that has nothing to do with sustainability. That's excellent. Well, Dana, thank you so much. I think we need to do a part two. We've got a lot more to say and we're kind of at our time limit here, but I think we need to have you on the show again soon. If you would join us again, we'd love to have you. Any last minute things that you wanted to mention about SEA ME or what you're doing there? Sure, I will just say, so I mentioned we've gotten a lot of retailers on board. We've currently got about 900 sale and return locations in Germany, but we actually are, we have a handful of agreements upcoming with many more retailers in Europe and are looking at a massive expansion of our retail partnerships. And so we're also in that, in this phase, looking for more brands to join us in the personal care and cosmetics. sectors. So open invitation for any brand selling products in plastic bottles. We would love to talk and see if there's a way to bring you into the European system. So health and beauty, wellness, those kinds of supplements, makeup, lotions, that kind of thing. cleaning products, anything in a PET bottle that's non-food, we can consider. Right. Well, we'll send them your way. Thank you so much again, Dana, for being on the show. Really appreciate your wisdom. Wonderful. Thank you, Cory.