New Paper: Reducing Emissions, Recovering Resources

While we work to expand access to our lifesaving sanitation services in Haiti, SOIL has also been hard at work to study the climate impacts of our waste treatment processes to help inform the global field of study and support the replication of climate-positive sanitation services worldwide. We’re excited to tell you that we have big news to share on the research front!

Five years after a study championed by SOIL’s research partner Dr. Rebecca Ryals began, the groundbreaking paper on the climate benefits of SOIL’s ecological sanitations services has officially been published.

Around the world, broken nutrient and carbon cycles waste a tremendous amount of precious natural resources and advance the progression of the climate crisis, but it doesn’t have to be that way! The Ryals paper, co-authored by SOIL, found that a closed-loop ecological sanitation service model like SOIL’s in Haiti has the potential to capture an “enormous and largely untapped resource stream” and in doing so “contribute to global greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals, improve the resiliency or agroecosystems, and advance sustainable development goals.”  When we say we believe waste is anything but that – we mean it!  

Globally both wastewater treatment plants as well as traditional non-sewered systems (think pit latrines and septic tanks) are major contributors of global greenhouse gas emissions. This paper – which is the first ever look into emissions from container-based toilets and composting waste treatment facilities – tells a different story.

Read the Paper

If you’re interested in learning more about what the researchers found and how SOIL’s solution represents a powerful and replicable solution at the nexus of many of the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges, we hope you’ll read the new paper here. If you don’t have access to the journal, the authors have generously offered to share a PDF without charge! Please contact Dr. Rebecca Ryals at [email protected] for a copy.

To see the key takeaways from the preliminary findings on SOIL’s blog here.

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Photo: Vic Hinterlang

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