| Each year, the average American household throws out 400 pounds of food, which winds up rotting in landfills and generating methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent in the short term than carbon dioxide. Cities and towns have tried to tackle this problem by promoting composting through municipal programs, but most Americans still dump their uneaten food into the trash. In 2019, the United States wasted more than 66 million tons of food, and only 5 percent of that was composted, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "It still stands true that for most households in the U.S., there's not an easy option for composting," said Dana Gunders, president of ReFED, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to ending food waste. Food dehydrator makers say their machines can be more convenient and less messy than traditional composting methods. But how useful is a dehydrator for helping to combat food waste? To see how the technology works, we tested a product we borrowed from Mill, a U.S.-based company selling a kitchen dehydrator for $999, for about a week. We fed the device a variety of food items ranging from common kitchen scraps to bones and raw meat. Here's what we learned. |
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