33 results for tag: sustainable sanitation
A conversation with SOIL’s Waste Treatment Manager, Sadouddly Michael Lambert
Our Haitian staff members remain safe in Cap-Haitien as we continue to navigate the current challenges with a robust emergency response plan and an incredibly dedicated group of employees. In one of our final staff conversations of the year, we spoke with Saddoudly Michael Lambert, SOIL’s Waste Treatment Manager, about his work, life and the current times in Haiti. Interviewer: How are you and your family doing right now? Sadouddly: My family and I are doing well although the situation is making things more difficult for us as it affects my family business and their daily activities. Interviewer: What does a typical work day look ...
Papers to Practice Podcast: SOIL’s Dr. Sasha Kramer and Research Partner, Dr. Rebecca Ryal discuss GHG Emissions and Waste
Last week, SOIL Executive Director Dr. Sasha Kramer, was featured, along with research partner, Dr. Rebecca Ryals of UC Merced, on the Papers to Practice podcast to talk about some of the research they have done to better understand the positive environmental impacts of SOIL's service and waste treatment methodology. Specifically, the podcast focused on one of the publications produced from this work titled Greenhouse gas fluxes from human waste management pathways in Haiti. The Papers to Practice podcast features discussion with the authors of sanitation-related publications and highlights key points and takeaways in order to make the research and ...
SOIL and Dr. Sasha Kramer Featured by Cartier Philanthropy
photo credit: SOIL/Tony Marcelli
SOIL's Executive Director, Dr. Sasha Kramer, was honored to recently speak with our long-time partner Cartier Philanthropy, alongside other development non-profit organizations, about finding ways to function and often flourish successfully, despite operating in countries facing arduous, persistently unstable conditions. Cartier Philanthropy featured the conversation in an article on their website. In the article, Sasha describes the challenges our team members in Cap-Haïtien face, and she explains that one of the keys to SOIL’s ability to carry on despite the current political and economic challenges in Haiti ...
Strategies for Change: SOIL’s Partnership with Appleseed
SOIL’s mission is to deliver safe, dignified, and affordable ecological sanitation services to households in Haiti and to increase sanitation access for all who want and need it. As readers of our blog know, one of the ways we do this is by providing in-home toilets and removing waste from communities via our EkoLakay services. A monthly service fee is collected from our customers which helps to cover the cost of the household toilet rental, weekly container collection & replacement, and waste treatment service. The customer fee helps to generate a stream of revenue for SOIL’s service to contribute to operational costs. However, customer fees ...
GENERATING EVIDENCE TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER PAYMENT BEHAVIOR INTERVENTIONS FOR CBS SERVICE IN HAITI
In April 2022, SOIL launched a new research project in partnership with Appleseed, a behavioral research agency, to better understand and evaluate customer payment behavior, and develop strategies on how to encourage EkoLakay household sanitation customers to regularly pay the monthly fee for the service on time. SOIL charges a monthly service fee from customers for our household toilet, weekly collection and waste treatment service, in order to contribute to operational cost recovery and establish the provision of sanitation as an essential basic service rather than a charity in Haiti. Unfortunately, establishing on-time payment behavior has been a ...
SOIL Wins Environmental Justice Prize
We are very excited to share a noteworthy recognition SOIL recently received. SOIL was chosen as the Environmental Justice Prize winner of the Solution Search: Water Pollution and Behavior Change contest hosted by Rare’s Center for Behavior & the Environment. The award is given to the best contest entrant that achieves progress on environmental justice and addresses the disproportionate impact of water pollution on communities of color, indigenous groups, and marginalized communities. In addition to winning the Environmental Justice Prize, we are also in the running as a finalist for the Grand Prizes which will be announced in September.
The ...
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 the incredible work that is being done in the sector to innovate more efficient ...
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 construction of our collection vehicles.
One of the biggest challenges we face in ...
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 creative design duo, has worked with us on a number of projects to improve ...
Executive Director, Dr. Sasha Kramer Represents SOIL at Latin America and Caribbean Finance Ministers’ Meeting
Graphic courtesy of Sanitation and Water for All
In November, SOIL Co-Founder and Executive Director Dr. Sasha Kramer represented SOIL and the private sector at the 2020 annual Latin America and the Caribbean Finance Ministers’ Meeting (FMM) hosted by Sanitation and Water for All (SWA), a collaborative partnership of governments and stakeholders in civil society, the private sector, United Nations agencies, research and learning institutions, development banks and the donor community. Sanitation and Water for All works at country, regional and global levels to coordinate and monitor progress toward the sanitation, water and hygiene- related ...