Meet Leno, SOIL’s Lab Tech Extraordinaire
SOIL’s crew of 92 is composed of many different teams that are all working towards the same goal: developing a sustainable model for the affordable provision of safe sanitation in urban Haiti. I want to introduce you to one of SOIL’s small, but mighty ones: the lab tech team in Cap-Haitien.
Ensuring Safety and Protecting the Environment
What do they do? The lab team’s role is to analyze samples of waste and compost at different points in the waste treatment process to ensure our composting systems are functioning effectively and that our end product, Konpòs ...
A Note from SOIL on the Recent Unrest in Haiti
SOIL's July Newsletter
Dear friends,
Again this month, we must depart from our traditional newsletter offerings. As many of you have likely seen, Haiti has been in the public eye this week as protests have gripped the capital city, Port-au-Prince, in response to a government announcement that prices for fuel would increase by nearly 50%, a move required by the International Monetary Fund as part of a reform program to unlock international donor support. For those of us who know and love Haiti, it is deeply disappointing to see the nation portrayed again and again as ...
EkoMobil: How SOIL Subsidizes Household Sanitation with a Port-a-Potty Business
Photo: Vic Hinterlang
Should EkoMobil scale up? This question is one that we’ve been asking ourselves at SOIL for several years. At the end of our last fiscal year, SOIL had strategized to release EkoMobil into the market in the hopes that it would flourish as an independently operated social business in Haiti. But it becomes increasingly apparent that this young program actually brings in more revenue than EkoLakay with minimal marketing on SOIL’s part, so we thought it best to reconsider our next steps.
What is EkoMobil?
EkoMobil is SOIL’s affordable, ...
SOIL Featured in New Book on Global Changemakers
Photo: Janae Lloyd
In 2006, SOIL was founded in the hopes that, in developing a local solution to the sanitation crisis in Haiti, we could spark a sanitation revolution and create meaningful change on a global scale. Today, we're focused on refining our model and expanding our regenerative urban sanitation service, EkoLakay, across Haiti. How have we done it and what have we learned along the way? In the Business of Change: How Social Entrepreneurs are Disrupting Business as Usual, a new book by Elisa Birnbaum, shares answers to these questions and tells the tale of ...
SOIL Completes Composting Site Expansion Project in Northern Haiti
Photo: Vic Hinterlang
Late last year we shared some pretty exciting news with you all. After nearly doubling the amount of waste SOIL had been treating at our Northern Haiti composting site, we broke ground on a significant infrastructure expansion project to enable SOIL to more efficiently treat waste and to prepare our site for the continued growth of EkoLakay’s sanitation service.
We’ve been hard at work to make these improvements and now have even bigger news to share – it’s complete!
What Have We Built?
Compost Batch Processing Unit
SOIL ...
Moving on Mobile Payments
By Jessica Laporte and Shannon Smith
SOIL has learned that successful operational transitions don’t necessarily come in one shape or size. They can be gradual, sudden, planned, or accidental. In the case of SOIL's decision to transition away from door-to-door payment collection for EkoLakay towards mobile payments, each SOIL office took different approaches, both of which led to significant progress.
Why Mobile Money?
As you can imagine, door-to-door payment collection is time consuming and costly for SOIL and oftentimes is inconvenient for EkoLakay customers. ...
New Research Demonstrates Safety of SOIL’s Waste Treatment Process
Photo: Vic Hinterlang
SOIL is committed to fully treating 100% of the wastes from each and every household EkoLakay toilet – and we take that responsibility very seriously!
Our treatment process has been developed alongside global experts and exceeds standards set by the World Health Organization for the safe treatment of human waste. Once the collected waste from the sanitation service has been treated and transformed into compost at one of SOIL’s two composting sites in Haiti, we sell the compost, Konpòs Lakay, across the country with a guarantee that it’s ...
Tree Hugger: How SOIL’s Humble Toilet is Improving Health in Haiti
Photo: Vic Hinterlang
Earlier this month at the 2018 Lush Spring Prize award ceremony, where SOIL was honored to receive the Established Project award in recognition of our regenerative sanitation work, we had the chance to chat with TreeHugger's Katherine Martinko on why we believe that a solution to one of the world's most pressing challenges lies in one of nature's most fundamental ecological processes.
Martinko writes that she "came away from the interview feeling amazed at the idea that something as humble as a toilet can combat cholera, create employment, boost ...
Sasha Kramer and Tony Loyd on Sustainable Sanitation Solutions
"SOIL’s (ecological sanitation) waste treatment facilities treat and transform more than 500 tons of human waste annually, providing a powerful example of how to affordably and effectively increase access to sustainable sanitation services worldwide," writes Tony Loyd, who welcomed SOIL's Dr. Sasha Kramer to join him in conversation last month on his podcast dedicated to sharing stories of solutions flourishing around the world.
Want to learn more? Follow this link to listen to their discussion on SOIL's journey, our lessons learned, and - ultimately - what we're ...
INKLINE: How SOIL is Chasing the Sustainable Sanitation Dream
Photo: Tony Marcelli
"Through EcoSan, SOIL is able to simultaneously tackle two of Haiti’s most pressing issues: providing access to sanitation for the people of Haiti and producing an endless supply of organic compost for agriculture and reforestation in Haiti."
SOIL's Business Development Director, Leah Nevada Page Jean, sat down with INKLINE to talk all things SOIL: from our founding in 2006 to our current work to create a model for sanitation provision that can be replicated across the world.
Click here to read the full article and let us know what you ...
