15 results for tag: Urban Sanitation

SOIL Attends Sustainable Sanitation Consortium in Cape Town

Consortium attendees in Cape Town.  This past September, SOIL Research Associate Maya Lubeck-Schricker traveled to Cape Town, South Africa to attend a research consortium meeting for the Off Grid Cities project. She joined researchers from Cranfield University (UK), University of Leeds (UK), Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Peru), University of the Western Cape (SA), and Meru University of Science and Technology (Kenya), as well as fellow Container-based Sanitation Alliance (CBSA) representatives from Sanima (Peru) and Sanergy (Kenya). The SOIL team is also working alongside Universite d’Etat Haiti (UEH) on this project, whose represe...

Increasing Impact with EkoLakay Public Toilets

SOIL staff member with public toilet In early 2020, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, SOIL began collaborating with the Cap-Haitien Meri (Mayor’s office) to support emergency response efforts for the pandemic. At the request of the Meri, SOIL was asked to provide and manage a public toilet option at the central market in the city to help ensure access to much needed safe sanitation and handwashing. And, while public toilets may seem counterintuitive in warding off a pandemic, the alternative of having no access to sanitation and the possibility of potentially virus-spreading waste to go out untreated into the environment, could have much ...

Women in Sanitation: Interview with Froggi VanRiper

Froggi VanRiper alongside churn study research team As a sustainable sanitation organization working in low-resource contexts, we rely on research and technological innovations to make our service as efficient as possible with the resources available. Providing sanitation in Cap-Haitien is incredibly challenging, and we respond to these challenges through research/innovation with the objective of making our service more inclusive and efficient. In addition to our incredible SOIL team, our Board of Directors and our newly founded Advisory Board, SOIL’s work has also been strategically informed by a global cohort of extremely passionate research ...

SOIL Brings Dignified Sanitation to Kanaval

SOIL team at Cap-Haitien Kanaval  In Haiti, Kanaval is a profoundly significant event that features music, food, and lots of dancing. This vibrant event lasts multiple days with people celebrating freely in the streets with masks, floats, and costumes, that reflect Haiti’s rich and beautiful culture. But, even in the midst of Haiti’s biggest party, SOIL was focusing on sanitation! SOIL was proud to be a part of the festivities by providing essential sanitation services in partnership with local authorities and businesses. Just in time for Kanaval, SOIL rolled out our brand-new mobile toilet container, developed in partnership with the Center ...

Introducing Our Advisory Board

At SOIL, we understand the power of teamwork and we are always seeking to collaborate with local and global experts that provide valuable input and strategic guidance for our organization and the service we provide.   In our 15 years of working in Haiti, we’ve made great progress in getting to where we are today, but none of that would be possible without the support of a critical network of people that have volunteered their time and knowledge in order to help guide our mission of providing equitable access to basic human rights.   In light of this collective effort, we are pleased to share a more formal establishment of our network through the ...

Brown is the Color of Rain: Guest Blog by Anthony Kilbride

EkoLakay client carrying waste containers through flood waters. Photo courtesy of Centre Impact These are strange times if you’re a raindrop. Gone are the days when you could predict your falling, or your freezing, but also the hardness and hygiene of your landing. Around the world, raindrops are finding themselves land on harder and dirtier surfaces, as we urbanize and impermeabilize our landscape, but also neglect to invest in the environmental health systems which keep us, and our raindrops, clean and safe.   All of us in this global village are reminded of this fact from time to time. Whether a community is rich or poor, urban or rural, ...

Digital Tools & Sanitation: SOIL Featured in GSMA

 EkoLakay workers using digital tools for collection  SOIL is working hard to transform the global sanitation crisis, and we know that it is going to take innovative solutions to provide safe and dignified sanitation options to those that are without. Throughout the years we have been working in Haiti, SOIL has demonstrated the ability to innovate and refine our model to meet the needs of vulnerable communities, while facing political, social, and environmental instability. This year alone, we’ve piloted multiple improvements to operational efficiency to optimize our service and increase customer satisfaction. One of our most successful innovat...

Creating Greater Impact Together: Interview with DINEPA’s Jude Fanfan

Every day SOIL works to empower the communities we serve and close the inequality gap in vulnerable and low-resource populations. We’re focused on helping to build resilient systems for basic service provision through dignified, affordable and accessible sanitation service. Over the course of this year, we’ve focused on improving the efficiency of the service through cost reductions and piloting improvements in our composting waste treatment process. Our goal is to provide a sustainable household sanitation service of the highest quality that meets the needs of the most vulnerable populations.   We believe that one of the best ways to improve ...

World Toilet Day: Valuing Container-based Sanitation

SOIL team installing EkoLakay toilet for client in Cap-Haitien.  In celebration of World Toilet Day, we wanted to dive into this year’s theme: Valuing Toilets, and take a look at how container-based toilets can play a catalytic role in expanding access to sanitation and the myriad of positive benefits they can bring to a community. SOIL launched the first container-based toilet in 2006 in Haiti, and since then a number of organizations around the world have launched their own container-based toilet services to address the lack of access to improved sanitation and meet the needs of vulnerable populations.   What is container-based sanitation? ...

New Research on Container-based Sanitation Models Published in H2Open Journal

Traditional sanitation models – flush toilets – require a reliable water source and sewage infrastructure, both of which can be cost prohibitive and infeasible to build in urban settlements with contested land tenure. The usual alternatives, like pit latrines and septic tanks, are also infeasible or unsafe in many urban areas due to space limitations, high water tables, and population density. With the population of urban areas set to double by 2050 and one in three people still lacking access to a toilet worldwide, interest in container-based sanitation models (CBS) as a viable sanitation alternative for cities is rapidly growing. Containe...