44 results for tag: research
Waste to Resources: SOIL’s Black Soldier Fly Research
Though SOIL’s work has undergone many iterations as we’ve carefully refined our model through the years, we have remained driven by our mission to transform waste that has such potential to do harm into resources that instead support social, economic, and environmental regeneration. As a part of this continued effort to increase the impact of SOIL’s affordable, safe, and dignified full-cycle sanitation services, a few of our team members have been working in collaboration with visiting researchers on an exciting new project at SOIL’s waste treatment site outside of Cap-Haïtien. Inspired by other members of the Container-Based Sanitation ...
Optimizing the Composting Process: Research Updates from Port-au-Prince
Gavin McNicol, who has long been active in SOIL’s research partnership with Dr. Rebecca Ryals, had the opportunity to visit us at SOIL’s composting waste treatment site just outside of Haiti’s capital city in earlier this year. In 2016, Gavin joined Dr. Ryals ongoing research investigating SOIL’s climate impact and helped spearhead research on the optimal conditions for the composting process. Gavin took a moment to share an update on the ongoing research as well as a sneak peek on a new research project that we are workin...
Showcasing Possibility at COP24
Earlier this month, SOIL was honored to receive the United Nations' Momentum for Change Award in Planetary Health at COP24 in Katowice, Poland. Momentum for Change honors innovative and transformative solutions that address both climate change and wider economic, social and environmental challenges. Recognized as a Lighthouse Activity, SOIL’s work is honored for being a practical, scalable and replicable example of a groundbreaking intervention to tackle climate change. Check out this video showcasing the Planetary Health award winners (narrated by Sir David Attenborough!): Planetary Health: Narrated Sir David Attenborough from Momentum ...
On Climate Change Mitigation: SOIL Research Updates
As the devastating impacts of climate change continue to mount around us, especially in vulnerable frontline communities like the ones SOIL serves in Haiti, we’re more motivated than ever to grow SOIL’s climate-positive sanitation solution, which transforms a public health crisis facing cities around the world into a restorative solution for the planet. Visit this page to learn about how SOIL's regenerative sanitation service helps communities adapt to the impacts of climate change.
On Mitigation:
During the ecological composting process, the microbial revolution that takes place in the compost bin eliminates harmful pathogens and transforms ...
Designing Data-Driven Sanitation Solutions: An Update on SOIL’s Climate Research
As the devastating impacts of climate change continue to mount around us, especially in vulnerable frontline communities like the ones SOIL serves in Haiti, we’re more motivated than ever to grow SOIL’s climate positive sanitation solution, which transforms a public health crisis facing cities around the world into a restorative solution for the planet. To help contribute to the emerging field of study and ensure that we’re developing data-driven sanitation solutions, SOIL works in close partnership with research institutions to document and test every aspect of our work in Haiti. We believe that through SOIL's ecological sanitation and ...
New Paper Digs into Process Costs of SOIL’s Regenerative Sanitation Service
Photo: Tony Marcelli
Urban sanitation interventions have historically focused on sewers or onsite sanitation options, such as pit latrines and septic tanks, but as cities are expanding at staggering rates, it’s increasingly clear that these traditional technologies are infeasible and unsafe in most urban environments. What’s also clear is that sustainability in our rapidly urbanizing world will require no less than a complete reconstruction of our cities. Instead of relying on systems that cause planetary harm, we’ll need to create ecologically regenerative infrastructure that provides needed services to urban residents while restoring a ...
Saving Water, Twenty Million Gallons at a Time
Two things we know to be true about SOIL’s crew: we’re data driven to our core and we’re really passionate about poop (or about finding innovative ways to transform it from something that wreaks havoc on the environment and public health into something that combats climate change and grows more food!) So, it won’t come to you as a surprise that our resident Composting Advisor Julie Jeliazovski decided to start tracking the number of times we were all using the restroom in SOIL’s office bathroom (aka our test lab!). She was hard at work crunching numbers to determine just how much water SOIL’s sanitation service is saving in Haiti when ...
New Research Demonstrates Safety of SOIL’s Waste Treatment Process
Photo: Vic Hinterlang
SOIL is committed to fully treating 100% of the wastes from each and every household EkoLakay toilet – and we take that responsibility very seriously! Our treatment process has been developed alongside global experts and exceeds standards set by the World Health Organization for the safe treatment of human waste. Once the collected waste from the sanitation service has been treated and transformed into compost at one of SOIL’s two composting sites in Haiti, we sell the compost, Konpòs Lakay, across the country with a guarantee that it’s pathogen free. But how do we know? Ensuring Pathogenic Die Off SOIL tests for ...
Monitoring Meteorology in One of the World’s Most Climate-Vulnerable Nations
Photo: Gavin McNicol
A little over a year ago SOIL collaborated with scientists Rebecca Ryals (University of California, Merced) and Gavin McNicol (University of Alaska Southeast) to install a weather station at our composting facility near the northern city of Cap-Haïtien.
Why a Weather Station?
First, we wanted to see if local weather conditions influence the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted during the composting process, which has been the primary focus of Becca and Gavin’s research with SOIL. We also wanted to start building a climate record for northern Haiti, a meteorologically dynamic region with sparsely available data.
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Taking Satisfaction Seriously
Photo: Julie Jeliazovski
So far this year, EkoLakay has carried out two comprehensive satisfaction surveys in order to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback on the household toilet service. We were pleased to see that customers overwhelmingly reported improved safety, health, and affordability. Despite very high overall satisfaction levels in both customer surveys in both Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien, a few customers in Port-au-Prince did note some issues with EkoLakay's cover material, bonzodè, which led us to look into the production protocol.
Optimizing Production Protocols The Port-au-Prince EkoLakay team took this feedback ...