CLEVELAND — The City of Beachwood has partnered with Rust Belt Riders to offer a free food scrap composting program to it’s residents.

Rust Belt Riders is a worker-owned cooperative that collects food scraps, recycles them and makes compost and soil.

Rust Belt Riders in northeast Ohio diverts about 300 tons of food scraps from the landfill every year.

The organization said that number is continuing to grow with partnerships like the one in Beachwood.

David Maccluskie, a commercial food scrap hauler with Rust Belt Riders, said the city of Beachwood is the first municipality to partner with them to offer free composting for city residents.

The Mayor of Beachwood, Justin Berns, believes this program a win-win for both residents and the city.

“Frankly, it is beneficial to the city; it saves us money from people depositing it in the garbage, we pay a per ton cost for our trucks to go in and dumping fees like every city has,” Berns said. "If we can avoid that cost and provide something good for the community, that is why we do this.”

Zoe Apisdorf with Rust Belt Riders said she hopes to see more cities offer composting programs for residents.

“There is about $218 billion that is lost and wasted annually on the growing processing and shipping of food, that never makes it to a plate,” Apisdorf explained. “That large scale amount of waste is happening at the same time that one in six kids in Cleveland are going hungry, so what we really want to make sure that we do is create a localized solution to this problem of food waste.”

The food scraps collected from programs like Beachwood's are combined with other scraps and then turned into living soil blends by “Tilth soil," a sister company of Rust Belt Riders. The soil is sold to commercial growers and home growers and the company said it increases germination rates, root development, moisture retention and plant health.