112 results for tag: compost

New and Improved Bonzode

One of SOIL's team members rocking protective equipment to keep dust out of his eyes while hard at work with our new bonzodè grinder! In Haitian Creole the word bonzodè means “good smell,” and that’s just what it does! What is it? Bonzodè is the cover material used as the “flush” in SOIL’s water-free household toilets. When a family on SOIL’s sanitation services uses their in-home toilet, they add a handful of bonzodè and it works its magic to prevent flies, ensure good smells, and aid in the composting process once waste makes its way to our treatment facility. Our bonzodè is made from materials once seen as waste and is a ...

JSTOR: A History of Human Waste As Fertilizers

In eighteenth-century Japan, human waste served a critical role in local agricultural production says JSTOR Daily. Their question in the recent article on sanitation history: can similar solutions help manage waste today? In the 1700s, Japanese community members saw human waste as a valuable substance for their crops and a viable tool for soil restoration and food security. It was so esteemed that landlords actually owned the rights to it and stealing the waste was a punishable crime! At this moment in history, the valorization of waste in the country put Japan’s sanitation miles ahead of European countries facing public health and hygiene ...

Nurturing Long-term Collaboration in Cite Soleil

Daniel during a visit to SOIL in northern Haiti last year Long-time SOIL partner and friend Daniel Tillias was recently nominated as a CNN hero in recognition of his transformative work in Haiti. Daniel is the co-founder of SAKALA, a community-building, sports, education and environmental organization in Cité Soleil and his organization has long used both SOIL toilets and compost in their garden! We first met Daniel in 2004 and have been proud to partner in a variety of ways since then, including in the humanitarian response to the devastating 2010 earthquake. Read an interview with Daniel below to learn more about how SAKALA uses ...

Meet Tidou

Lucny Joasil, better known to everybody as Tidou, has been connected to SOIL for more than a decade. He first met SOIL Co-Founder and Executive Director Sasha Kramer in 2008 when SOIL was looking to hire Haitian Creole-English teachers and translators. That was Tidou’s initial role with SOIL and over the years he has moved into new positions with our team, each time taking on more and more responsibility. Now, he’s the Assistant Composting Supervisor at SOIL’s waste treatment site outside of Cap-Haïtien. Reporting directly to SOIL’s Composting Supervisor Job Etienne, Tidou helps collect data, supervises composting activities, oversees ...

Discussing Future Growth with Local Stakeholders

Last month SOIL’s Port-au-Prince team hosted a meeting alongside community members and Haiti’s Ministry of Environment (MDE) to discuss SOIL’s composting waste treatment site and plans for future growth. It was a part of a broader Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) that the MDE leads and was a great opportunity for SOIL to continue to deepen relationships both with government partners and our neighbors and communities just outside of Haiti’s capital city. We opened the session by explaining SOIL’s complete waste treatment process, including the dumping of containers, the washing and disinfecting of containers, full treatment of the ...

JOB OPENING: Waste Treatment Advisor

SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods) is working in Haiti to transform waste into useful resources since 2006. Our mission is to support dignity, health and sustainable social work in transforming waste into significant resources for the nature. SOIL is seeking advisory support for our composting program to provide strategic guidance and promote ongoing research collaborations. The advisor will play the role of providing key support to the Composting Managers and acting as a liaison between external researchers and the SOIL operational team to push forward innovations and improve operational efficiency. We are looking for someone ...

Building for Growth: New Compost Bins in Northern Haiti

Over the last year, SOIL has captured and safely treated 450 metric tons of waste that could have otherwise gone on to contaminate aquatic ecosystems and groundwater sources. The over 92 metric tons of compost produced during this time has instead been returned to the soil to restore ecosystems and improve agricultural livelihoods in northern Haiti. As SOIL works towards an ambitious expansion of the reach our household full-cycle sanitation service in the coming years, expanding infrastructure at SOIL's composting treatment facilities helps us develop the capacity we need for this growth. And that's just what we have been up to! A New Composting ...

“Priceless:” A Young Agronomist Tests SOIL Compost

Nitchenson Henry grew up in northwestern Haiti and now lives in Limonade, not far from SOIL’s composting site. He’s known what he wanted to do for a living for as long he can remember and is now proud to be working towards it as an agronomy student at a local university. Nitchenson’s hope is one that we share at SOIL: to find ways to restore soil health and agricultural productivity across Haiti. Look at that beautiful pepper! During a visit to SOIL’s composting site in northern Haiti for one of his college courses, Nitchenson had a chance to learn about our ecological sanitation services and see first-hand how we treat and transform ...

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 ...

Tracking the Reach of SOIL’s Compost

Every bag of compost we sell is a step towards a greener, more resilient future for Haiti. To help us improve SOIL’s compost marketing and sales and to grow the reach of our lush, organic soil amendments in a country with dangerously degraded soils, we track the reach of our compost meticulously. As we crunch the numbers and work to incorporate the learnings into our strategy moving forward, we have four interesting findings to share about compost sales trends this spring: + Though we have a large, loyal customer base of clients that buy a bag of compost here and there to help their gardens grow, more than half of SOIL’s compost goes on ...