SOIL Featured in New Book: Pipe Dreams by author Chelsea Wald
Are you interested in taking a global tour of sanitation solutions that are re-envisioning the way we think about the loo? Look no further than award-winning science journalist, Chelsea Wald’s new book, Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet! The book, which debuted on April 6th, addresses numerous issues that we at SOIL grapple with every day; such as the sustainability of waste, the flaws of our current (and perhaps outdated) system, and how to properly and sustainably deliver sanitation services to underserved populations. Pipe Dreams explores ...
From Larvae to Chicken Feed: What’s New with Black Soldier Fly Research
In 2019, the SOIL Research Team began testing out the possibility of using black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) as a new, additional method of transforming waste from our EkoLakay sanitation service into another valuable resource.
Led by SOIL Waste-to-Resource Consultant, Michèle Heeb, SOIL experimented with BSFL at our composting site in Northern Haiti and found that our EkoLakay waste was indeed suitable for this exciting technology. The Research Team even managed to breed the flies in captivity, a prerequisite for the technology to work on a large scale. These promising ...
Haiti Update: SOIL Board Member, Johnny Cèlestin, Speaks with DeRay Mckesson on Protest Movement
For months now, Haiti has been experiencing an alarming level of political turmoil and social unrest. The most recent protests around the country are the result of a myriad of stressors including worsening living conditions, allegations of government corruption, police brutality, and an uptick in kidnappings. In the past few weeks, calls for action, like #FreeHaiti and #HaitiSolidarity, began to appear across social media platforms, as the situation in Haiti started to make international news.
SOIL has been working for over a decade to promote human rights, environmental ...
SOIL x Reel Video: What does water mean to you?
This year on World Water Day, we were excited to collaborate with one of our incredible Give-Back Partners, Reel Paper. SOIL’s CEO and co-founder, Dr. Sasha Kramer, and board members, Johnny Cèlestin and Ingrid Henrys, sat down with members of the Reel team, including co-founder, Derin Oyekan, for an inspiring conversation on World Water Day. As organizations driven by the need for climate-positive and inclusive solutions to sanitation, World Water Day is especially important to us and the work that we do.
SOIL began partnering with California-based brand, Reel ...
Improving Collections with Human-Centered Design
As a part of SOIL’s research and development initiatives and human centered design optimization, our research team has identified a number of projects to help improve efficiency for our service. This includes ongoing research on identifying ways to make the composting process faster and cheaper so that we’ll be able to treat more waste at SOIL’s composting waste treatment site in Mouchinette, as well as optimizing our collection routes to reduce mileage. Over the past few months, our team has again focused on a human-centered design approach to improve the constr...
Happy International Women’s Day!
On March 8th we celebrate International Women’s Day! This day serves as a rallying call for gender equality and women’s rights around the world, and urges all of us to advocate for the empowerment of all women and girls.
We live in a world where women earn 23% less than men globally, and where nearly 60% of women around the world work in the informal economy - earning less, saving less and at greater risk of falling into poverty. Gender equality is central to all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and SDG 6, Clean Water and Sanitation, is no exception. ...
Understanding the Price: the Push for Economic Biodiversity
(photography credit theguardian.com)
The question of putting a price tag on planet earth has been a topic of discussion over the last few years, as we grapple with how to address the global impacts of climate change. On a planet where distribution of environmentally beneficial resources (like the Amazon rainforest) is vastly different among countries, how do we ...
Better, Cheaper, Faster: Researching Ways to Improve SOIL’s Composting Process
Over the last six months, SOIL has made exciting and significant progress in expanding access to dignified and reliable sanitation for vulnerable communities in Haiti. In order to continue on this upward trend, we at SOIL are working hard to produce innovative approaches to support our growth strategy to accommodate more households on the service and the additional increase in waste to treat.
To help with our strategy, we are once again partnering with Human Centered Design experts, Lukas Baumgartner and Jojo Linder, consultants from Kreativ Konsum and Kompotoi. The ...
Meet Djimitri, SOIL’s Director of Operations
SOIL’s Director of Operations, Djimitri Célestin, growing directly out of Konpòs Lakay bags mixed with soil.
We recently sat down with Djimitri Célestin, SOIL’s Director of Operations, to learn more about him, his connection to SOIL, and his lovely garden in Cap Haitien, where he grows vegetables using SOIL's Konpòs Lakay. Djimitri has been a part of the SOIL family since 2019. A condensed version of his interview follows. We hope you enjoy getting to know Djimitri, as much as we enjoy working with him!
Tell us about yourself and how you came to work with ...
SOIL and CBSA Study: Comparing Costs of Urban Sanitation Solutions
With more than four billion people still lacking access to safe sanitation globally, we know that it’s going to take a multitude of innovative solutions to successfully tackle a crisis of this proportion. A one-size-fits-all solution to the global sanitation crisis is not realistic, instead focusing on expanding access to safe sanitation that meets the need of the local context is likely the most impactful way forward. But, for so long, the data necessary to successfully operate a localized approach has been inaccessible, incomplete, and challenging to compare. Thus, it ...
