SOIL has just released its annual report. Founded in 2006, SOIL has been transforming wastes into resources in Haiti. Through the use of ecological sanitation, SOIL is working to create a social business model for providing access to safe, dignified sanitation that produces organic compost as a natural resource for Haiti’s badly-depleted soils, while also creating economic opportunities in some of the world’s most under-resourced communities.
The full report is available here. The following are excerpts from the report.
- CHIP editors
In SOIL’s simple social business design, customers rent a SOIL household “EkoLakay” toilet for a monthly fee of approximately $5 USD. SOIL sanitation workers visit each household weekly to collect the toilet wastes and deliver a fresh supply of carbon material (used for “flushing” composting toilets). SOIL’s EkoLakay model has the potential to revolutionize the provision of dignified household sanitation in informal urban
settlements around the world.
SOIL continues to provide humanitarian relief in the form of free public toilets in some of Haiti’s most vulnerable communities – notably those that have been particularly impacted by the cholera epidemic, which has sickened over three-quarters of a million people in the last five years. SOIL is researching ways to make these public toilets financially sustainable to ensure that access to dignified sanitation will always be possible in the places where it is needed most.
Wastes from all of SOIL’s toilets in Haiti are transported via the “Poopmobile” to the SOIL composting waste treatment facility. There, the material is transformed into rich, organic, agriculturalgrade compost through a carefully monitored process that exceeds the World Health Organization’s standards for safe treatment of human waste. Since building the first waste treatment facility in Haiti in 2009, SOIL has gone on to become one of the largest waste treatment operations in the country.
Posted on Oct. 30, 2015