The Des Moines Register

The brown-spotted bananas, misshapen green peppers and wilted lettuce you passed over at your local Hy-Vee grocery store may well be part of the dark, rich compost you buy at the store’s garden center this spring.

Turning food waste into usable goods is becoming more the rule than the exception at a growing number of Iowa grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals and public institutions.

Those companies collect unsold produce, table scraps and food waste otherwise bound for the landfill and turn it over to companies that recycle the slop into compost.

West Des Moines-based Hy-Vee Inc. takes the process one step further by selling the end product at many of its stores.

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