G. I. company out to make food waste a power source

Don’t throw out that banana peel.

Instead, give it to Scott Ernst.

He’ll gladly take it and other food waste as he’s working toward creating grid-scale organic batteries to store energy for wind farms and solar energy projects.

Ernst is managing director of River Road Research, a five-year-old company that using melanin to build better batteries.

In January, River Road Research was awarded a patent for a method to produce melanin.

Melanin, the primary determinant of skin color, is a pigment…