New Research Shows SOIL’s Compost Often More Effective Than Chemical Fertilizer
Photo credit: Tony Marcelli
Last June, we introduced our readers to Estrella Ardanza and Susana Perez Bejar, two Cranfield University students who have been busy studying the impact of SOIL’s Konpòs Lakay compost on native Haitian plants for their Master's theses. After months of hard work and thoughtful collaboration, we’re excited to share that the numbers have been crunched and the theses have been written.
SOIL is dedicated to developing innovative and research-based ecological sanitation solutions here in Haiti and for years we’ve partnered with farmers and ...
Container Based Sanitation Takes Center Stage at World Water Week
At World Water Week, the world’s largest annual gathering focused on water issues, it was actually poop that took center stage this year! The theme of this year’s conference was “Water and Waste: Reduce and Reuse” – and the buzz around SOIL and other Container-Based Sanitation (CBS) service providers was palpable. See for yourself: Devex reported that the innovation happening in CBS was one of the top five highlights of the conference!
Why all the excitement? As cities and municipalities work to increase access to sanitation, they have run up against signifi...
Digitizing SOIL’s Sanitation Service
Photo: Vic Hinterlang
SOIL began using TaroWork's digital tools last year to collect payments, manage customer accounts, conduct research, and test marketing strategies. The data that we've since collected is already helping us to optimize our logistics and make refinements to EkoLakay, like rolling out a mobile payment collection service.
Last month, SOIL Systems Director Erica Lloyd and Marketing and Sales Advisor Shannon Smith joined a webinar for TaroWorks to discuss how SOIL has digitized EkoLakay's sales and operational activities to refine and scale up our ...
What You Do Want To Know About Haiti’s Sewage Problems
Photo: Tony Marcelli.
How Haiti’s Innovative Sanitation Solutions Are Spreading Across the World
Earlier this summer I opened my voicemail to a message from my dear friend Anne, who had left a message for me during her evening commute. She called me from the side of the road after having been so deeply moved by an unexpected NPR segment on the sanitation crisis in Haiti and the courage of Haiti’s latrine cleaners, the bayakou, across the country. Unlike Anne, who has long known of SOIL’s work to transform waste in Haiti, most loyal NPR listeners in the US learned ...
Hurricane Irma has Passed Haiti: Updates from the SOIL Crew
As the SOIL team braced for Irma to make its way through the Caribbean this week and potentially through the communities in Northern Haiti where we have worked since 2006, we hoped for the best and prepared for the worst. We gathered materials, readied our vehicles, and hit the streets throughout frontline communities to urge those who were able to evacuate to do so. During our EkoLakay collections, we talked with hard to reach communities about the risks of flooding and importance of safety planning.
Emergency Preparedness
For the 48 hours prior to Irma's arrival north ...
Preparing for Irma
Photo from Cap-Haitien flooding in 2016. Our EkoLakay toilets are intentionally designed to be resilient to natural disasters.
While our hearts are heavy from watching this past week's climate devastation unfold in frontline communities across Texas, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, we’ve also been keeping a close eye on Hurricane Irma as it heads across the Caribbean.
We’re all still hoping that Irma will veer to the north and fizzle out, but we’re also bracing for the worst here in Haiti. Right now, northern Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic are under ...
Expanding Access to Sanitation 73 Toilets at a Time
Photo: Tony Marcelli
SOIL just wrapped up its fiscal year last month and we ended on a high note with 73 EkoLakay toilet installations in July alone. That’s more toilets than we had previously installed during any month this year!
The majority of these new customers live in two densely populated urban areas in Cap-Haitien: Nan Bannann, a relatively new service area for EkoLakay, and Fort Saint Michel, a nearby neighborhood where SOIL has been working for several years. We don't have precise data on sanitation coverage in these neighborhoods, but local community-based ...
Tomorrow: SOIL to Present on Container Based Sanitation Solutions at World Water Week
Photo: Monica Wise
Every year thousands of practitioners and changemakers from around the world gather in Stockholm to address critical global water issues at World Water Week. This year, the conference's theme is “water and waste: reduce and reuse” and participants will focus on the intersection of the water and sanitation crises with an eye on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
SOIL is honored to be a part of these important conversations to both learn from global experts and to present on the innovative and sustainable container...
Breaking Ground: SOIL Expands Composting Site After Nearly Doubling Waste Treatment Operations
Photo: Chris Buck
In Haiti, the demand for affordable and dignified sanitation solutions, like EkoLakay’s in-home composting toilet, is high. SOIL is striving to be conscientious of how we grow to meet that demand so that we’re expanding in a way that’s sustainable. Even as we refine our model and work to grow responsibly, we have exciting news to report about how much we have in fact grown throughout the past year.
Are you ready for it? In one year’s time, SOIL has nearly doubled the size of our waste treatment operations. This means we have nearly doubled ...
New Mural in Miami’s Little Haiti Honors SOIL’s Work
At SOIL we are always humbled by the outpouring of generous and creative support we receive from SOIL cultivators and friends across the world who allow us to incubate sustainable sanitation solutions for Haiti’s most vulnerable communities. Some of our most creative support to date has come out of one high school in Miami – which has a club dedicated solely to advocating SOIL’s mission to transform waste into resources in Haiti!
At the end of this past school year, students from the SOIL at Miami Beach Senior High Club (SOIL@MBSH) collaborated with art students ...
