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 ...
Next Billion: Rethinking the Flush Toilet
Photo: Virginia Gardiner
As a founding member of the Container-Based Sanitation (CBS) Alliance, SOIL is proud to see other container-based technologies gaining steam worldwide. In an article for Next Billion, LooWatt's Virginia Gardiner explains that it's necessary to shift away from seeing flush toilets as the solution to the sanitation crisis and argues that CBS systems, like SOIL's EkoLakay in-home toilet, are the most viable sanitation intervention for rapidly urbanizing communities.
From Next Billion's article:
"In the 21st century, sanitation infrastructure ...
EkoLakay Customer Satisfaction Report: Improved Safety, Health, and Affordability
What better time than during the dead heat of summer to charge up your smart phone and trek through the urban sprawl of Haiti to interview people about their toilets (or lack thereof)? Undeterred by the heat, this is exactly what the SOIL team has been up to this summer!
The Port-au-Prince office just completed the first segment of this marketing research with a satisfaction survey to assess how current EkoLakay customers like their household EcoSan toilet. With just shy of 200 customers in the Ti Plas Kazo neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, our sample size was modest, but ...
Global Consultancy Firm Supports EkoLakay’s Preparation for Responsible Scale-Up
Container Based Sanitation Background
Traditional sanitation models - flush toilets - require a reliable water source and sewage infrastructure, both of which can be cost prohibitive and infeasible to build in urban settlements with contested land tenure. The usual alternatives, onsite systems like pit latrines and septic tanks, are also infeasible or unsafe in many urban areas due to space limitations, high water tables, and population density. With the population of urban areas set to double by 2050 and one in three people still lacking access to a toilet worldwide, ...
National Geographic: Nearly a Billion People Still Defecate Outdoors. Here’s Why.
The latest issue of National Geographic magazine explores how open air defecation practices are becoming increasingly hazardous to public health in our rapidly urbanizing world. Traditional sanitation solutions are often infeasible and cost-prohibitive, though sustainable alternatives - such as EkoLakay's composting toilet that SOIL is pioneering in Haiti - are responding to the crisis.
From National Geographic:
"In [Cap-Haïtien] a worker from Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), a nonprofit organization, delivers a new bucket and takes away one ...
Capturing the Conditions of a Microbial Revolution
The latest research SOIL is conducting, in continued collaboration with the University of Hawai’i, is assessing how the thermophilic phase of the composting process facilitates the transformation of dangerous waste into safe and nutrient-rich compost.
After months of careful preparation, UH Mãnoa ecologists Gavin McNicol and Dr. Rebecca Ryals visited SOIL’s composting site in Cap Haïtien to install sensors that will monitor key variables that affect the microbial life of a compost pile: temperature, oxygen availability, and moisture. The microbial transfor...
Devex: How a new toolkit is helping nonprofits like SOIL budget for risk
Devex's recent article highlighted SOIL's partnership with the Open Road Alliance, who helped us overcome literal road blocks and plan for future risk. Open Road's support allowed us to continue to grow EkoLakay, our partnership with the Haitian government, and a model research site designed to support the replication of SOIL’s work around Haiti and the world.
From Devex:
"Every NGO faces roadblocks at one point or another. But SOIL, an organization working to address the sanitation problem in Haiti, was literally prevented from getting from point A to point B. ...
SOIL Staff Summer Project Bears Fruit
The SOIL team takes a lot of pride both in our lush office gardens and in the various plants that flourish throughout our composting sites. We love to encourage biodiversity by planting a wide variety of local species - whether that’s coconut trees, mango trees, or smaller flowery bushes like the beautiful bougainvillea seen throughout Haiti. In the backyards of our offices and across the country, these plants attract birds and insects and act as a peaceful oasis for many other species.
Each day SOIL transforms human waste into rich, organic compost and this summer ...
TeleSur: Organization Improves Sanitation in Haiti With Toilets
We're excited to share that TeleSur English featured SOIL's EkoLakay household composting toilet service as a uniquely viable solution to the sanitation crisis in Haiti. The article features excerpts from a recent NPR-KGOU interview with our Deputy Director, Nick Preneta. Read on!
From TeleSur English:
"SOIL provides a household toilet service called EkoLakay. Customers rent a locally-made eco-friendly composting toilet in their home for approximately US$3-4 per month. The organization [collects] the full buckets and transports the waste to its compost sites, where ...
With Thanks and Gratitude
Dear friends and supporters,
On behalf of the entire team here at SOIL, thank you. Together, we surpassed our goal and raised over $17,000 in support of SOIL's lifesaving household toilet program, EkoLakay. Because of your kind support, our team will be able to hit the streets and spread the word about our growing service.
This year, we're focused on reducing the costs of providing the service to clients, increasing the number of EkoLakay clients in our service areas, and testing a variety of improvements to the EkoLakay service. Our goal is to provide a truly ...
