Clara Voss, a former librarian from Midland Falls whose most successful project to date involved color-coding her personal shame library, received a patent Tuesday for the Regret Recycler. The shoebox-sized machine processes verbal regrets into a substance legally recognized as compost, provided you don't look too closely.
Users activate the device by leaning into a funnel-shaped microphone made from a repurposed pasta strainer—it’s that or screaming directly into the compost bin, which Clara argues is less efficient. They must recite their past mistakes with a minimum of 60% sincerity, as measured by a tiny, unblinking sensor light that judges you. An internal processor, powered by motors salvaged from mid-2000s smoothie blenders, then churns the audio data alongside a pre-measured blend of used coffee grounds, eggshells, and the palpable disappointment of Clara’s 2019 pottery class for exactly 28 minutes. Not 27, not 29. It’s a precise science.
The Secretariat of Waste Management issued a statement praising the invention's potential to cut household organic waste by a deeply specific 14%. Voss demonstrated the unit’s efficacy by feeding it live regrets from her Tuesday book club, including one member’s entire review of a poorly-paced historical novel. The resulting humus was noted for its "surprisingly acidic pH."
The company’s trials, which involved 47 volunteers who were mostly just happy to talk about themselves, showed the output fertilizing tomato plants to heights of 1.2 meters in two weeks. One notable batch, fed exclusively with regrets about a 2017 asymmetrical haircut, produced unnervingly thorny vines and tomatoes that tasted vaguely of salon-grade perm solution. A side effect of the process is the faint, perpetual smell of damp guilt and electrical burning, which Clara markets as "Eau de Catharsis."
Voss plans a home model rollout by spring, with an optional subscription service for premium regret-catalyzing pellets. When asked about scalability, she noted the prototype once successfully processed a neighbor’s entire monologue about not buying Bitcoin in 2013, yielding enough compost to fill three standard terracotta pots. It’s progress, of a sort.
