Rust Belt Riders to buy land for composting facility

Rust Belt Riders, a Cleveland-based worker-owned cooperative focused on composting solutions for food waste, is negotiating the purchase of a former waste transfer station site on the city’s east side.

The composting company is negotiating the purchase of a 6-acre parcel of land, that for many years housed a Cleveland municipal solid waste (MSW) transfer station, at reported price of $790,000, according to a report from Cleveland.com.

Earlier this year, it was reported that the company and the city of Cleveland intended to work out a lease arrangement at the same site, but both parties now have concluded a land sale is a better option.

The land parcel is a brownfield site, and the report says the city will pay for soil remediation costs to be deducted from the $790,000 total.

Once Rust Belt Riders owns the land, it intends to invest $3.5 million to consolidate its regionwide operations on the parcel and build a facility to host them, according to the report.

Rust Belt Riders has several food scrap drop-off sites throughout the Cleveland area. The firm currently processes and packages composted materials at several locations in northern Ohio, some of which will be centralized at the new site.

“The new East 79th Street hub will house trucks, soil-blending operations and a new composting facility all in one place,” the report says, adding it will have the capacity to process about 5,000 tons of food scraps annually.

The report indicates the site has been vacant for more than two decades since being abandoned as an MSW transfer station.

Rust Belt Riders was founded in 2014 and, in addition to hosting several residential food scraps drop-off sites, offers a commercial collection service for grocers, restaurant owners, schools and office buildings.