Latest Updates
San Francisco joins the composting toilet revolution!
SOIL was co-founded in 2006 in San Francisco California. We are so pleased to see that our dream has come full circle with San Francisco now considering putting in a network of public composting toilets throughout the city to help solve the sewage and water problems faced by large cities around the world.
A recent film about SOIL called Holy Crap ends with one of our favorite Haitian collaborators, Daniel Tillias of Pax Christi Haiti, saying "with this composting toilet program, Haiti will once again be an example to the world, just as we have been in the past". We are ...
SAKALA Field trip to Compost Site
Last Sunday 12 young women from Cite Soleil visited the SOIL compost site in Pernier. The young women were from a local organization called SAKALA (supported by Pax Christi Haiti) which works on community development and conflict prevention in Cite Soleil. SOIL has been working with SAKALA for the past 2 years on ecological sanitation and we currently have 20 toilets in the Cite Lumiere neighborhood of Cite Soleil where SAKALA is active. SAKALA has recently started an amazing community garden called Tap Tap Garden with the support of Bochika, a ...
Household Sanitation Survey Almost Complete
In one of the urban neighborhoods hardest hit by cholera, Shada, Cap-Haitien, SOIL community workers have been going door-to-door to find out why. Over the past four weeks, SOIL has spoken with the residents of over 2,500 households about their access to sanitation and their family's hygiene practices. The data gathered will paint an important picture of the sanitation realities of urban communities in Haiti and will help SOIL design a better pilot program to bring household EcoSan toilets to this neighborhood, and then hopefully someday, neighborhoods like it all across ...
SOIL's 2012 calendar available soon!
SOIL's 2012 calendar is at the printer! It was designed by the amazing Mimi Jorling, a friend and volunteer of SOIL, who lives in New York City but also volunteers for a local organization in Cabaret, just outside Port-au-Prince. The 2012 calendar follows the EcoSan cycle, featuring gorgeous photos of the elements of EcoSan- people, toilets, compost and agriculture. This year we chose to print the calendars on high post-consumer content 100% recycled paper using only low-impact soy and vegetable based inks. The calendars were printed by Greenerprinter in Berkeley, ...
SOIL has its sixth, last and most fruitful EcoSan Training of 2011!
On Thursday, November 10th, twenty-four enthusiastic individuals representing local, national and international organizations came together in Port-au-Prince to learn ecological sanitation principles and best practices in a day-long training lead by SOIL staff.
This year SOIL began a series of training sessions to introduce other NGOs and individuals to ecological sanitation technology whereby human waste is collected and composted for use in agriculture and reforestation efforts across Haiti. The response was overwhelming with nearly every session at or above capacity. ...
SOIL's Poopmobile Gets a Paint Job!
Several times a week SOIL driver Clotes Alexandre starts up the large flatbed truck parked outside the front door of the office and rumbles out into the streets of Port-au-Prince. With the help of SOIL's Drum Collection Team, Davidson Ulysses and Herby Sanon, Clotes works his way through urban neighborhoods and tent cities, collecting the 15 gallon drums used in SOIL's ecological toilets and driving them out to a SOIL composting site where the drums are then dumped and cleaned and readied for redistribution on the next trip. Thanks to a donation from the Rattray Kimura ...
SOIL celebrates World Hand Washing Day in Shada
A special post from SOIL Board Member Jessica Lozier On Saturday October 15th, the SOIL team joined hands with the community of Shada to celebrate Universal Hand-Washing Day, a neighborhood where SOIL has worked for years. Children and adults alike participated in the community celebration which included hand-washing demonstrations, the distribution of important sanitation information, and entertaining skits and songs performed by local community groups. Of course no Haitian celebration would be complete without music, and the DJ had the crowd dancing and singing ...
October 2011: Great news from Port-au-Prince!
Dear friends and supporters, I am ashamed that this letter is so long in coming. I know that the last time we wrote to you SOIL was facing a major crisis and I am so grateful to those of you who reached out to us during that difficult time. I know that many of you may have been wondering if we still exist and I am thankful to be able to share good news with you in this letter. In mid June just when we were certain that we would have to close our Port-au-Prince office and cut off our emergency services, a miracle happened. An old friend of mine put me in touch with ...
SOIL Letters: The Cycle of Nutrients
SOIL Letters is a blog series featuring some of the beautiful letters we've received over the years in support of the work we're doing in Haiti. 10 September 2011 Dear Sasha: Thank you so much for your work in Haiti. We were glad to see the collaboration with Oxfam, but we received your letter in June about having to withdraw some support from the camps. When I first learned of you and your organization, I was thrilled to see the connections between compost and fertility and sanitation in a place that needs it desperately. The cycle seems so simple, so ...
Sustainable Sanitation Alliance Publishes SOIL's Paper: Can We Sell EcoSan Compost in Haiti? A Market Analysis Report
With the support of Oxfam Great Britain, SOIL conducted a market assessment of compost and fertilizer sales in Haiti with a specific focus on indentifying possible markets for the sale of compost generated by EcoSan projects. Throughout the course of this study, the following market conditions were evaluated in detail: the prices, availability and quality of the different options for fertilizer and compost currently available in Haiti,
the agricultural practices of small-scale farmers,
the results from preliminary marketing and outreach efforts to potential ...