Living in the desert of Las Vegas and work I g in a casino that separates food waste from plastics and other wastes; I often wonder if the food waste in high amounts could give life to the soil or would it just be a biohazard to try to mix it into the earth to bring back nutrients.

Question

Was wondering if deep trenches where filled out in the desert with food bio-waste. Could we perform small scale terra-forming? Would it just end up creating a mess. Kinda wonder of we could even bank away useable biomass in the deserts even.

In: Other

Answer 1

Generally you should properly compost it first. When you collect food scraps, they probably are composted in controlled circumstances rather than dumping it in a trench in the desert. It would probably dry out in the desert and take a long time (or basically never) become usable soil.

There is a lot of compost available from processed food waste and from cow manure, etc. It’s widely used as fertilizer in many places, and it works well.

So in addition to your idea of using food waste from local casinos, you could bring nutrient-rich soil in from somewhere else (compost or from another source).

The main problem in deserts is water, though. The plants that can survive with so little water are used to the small amount of other nutrients in the soil (their growth rate can’t be super high without much water anyways). Plants that would need more nutrients from the soil can’t survive with so little water.

And water is a lot harder to carry in, as soon as you add more of it, it starts to evaporate, and it’s heavy. Las Vegas gets its water from an artificial lake made by a dam on the Colorado River. This can only supply so much water and it’s a big problem. So they would not waste their limited water supply by attempting to make the desert more fertile.