Haiti was once known as the Pearl of the Antilles for its vibrant, bountiful, and productive land. Today, Haiti struggles with endemic poverty and cannot produce enough food for its population. The majority of Haitians have no access to a toilet, and  as people work to restore their country’s economy and environment, and to keep their families safe and healthy, every day Haiti’s soils are contaminated with untreated human waste, fueling waterborne disease and preventing Haiti’s environment from reaching its full potential.

Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) is a US non-profit organization founded in 2006 in northern Haiti. SOIL is driven by a philosophy called Liberation Ecology. Influenced by both the liberation theology movement and ecological theory, Liberation Ecology recognizes that the most threatened and marginalized human beings will generally be found living in similarly threatened ecosystems. SOIL seeks to empower the marginalized and oppressed, equipping them to restore their environments by transforming dangerous pollutants into valuable resources.

SOIL'S OBJECTIVES

• Sanitation: Safe, dignified, sustainable sanitation that is accessible to all Haitians – and all those living in impoverished communities around the world. An in-home toilet provides a sense of pride, and means increased safety and security for women and girls in particular.
• Public Health: Increasing access to sanitation means putting a stop to waterborne and diarrheal disease. By removing pathogenic waste from the communities they serve, SOIL is combatting common diseases like cholera and typhoid.
• Productivity: Keeping children and families safe and healthy allows them to attend work and school with fewer interruptions, meaning greater economic security and productivity.
• Environmental restoration: Ensuring that all human waste is safely treated lessens the burden on Haiti’s fragile environment. Going a step further and transforming wastes into rich compost proactively heals Haiti’s environment, and helps to combat the effects of climate change.
• Sustainable communities: creating community-based jobs, dismantling the taboos around sanitation, and fostering the belief that access to sanitation is a human right.

SOIL puts Liberation Ecology to action through livelihood creation in the sanitation sector. Their social business models follow the EcoSan cycle, creating jobs along the way that ensure their impact is truly lasting. From the construction of EkoLakay and EkoMobil toilets, to selling compost, to harvesting more crops, they are creating new value chains that are far-reaching and supportive of life’s most crucial daily necessities.

SOIL is working to transform conditions in Haiti with both short-term projects that address critical needs and a long-term strategy to expand sanitation access through social business models.

SOIL's social business model around ecological sanitation (EcoSan) is a process in which nutrients from human wastes return to the soil rather than polluting fresh water resources.

Social business pilot EkoLakay is a container-based ecological sanitation solution. Container Based Sanitation is any end-to-end service that collects human waste hygienically from toilets built with sealable, removable containers and strives to ensure that the waste is safely treated, disposed of, and reused. CBS solutions represent an elegant and waterless solution to pit latrines and traditional sewerage systems.

Every household signed up for SOIL’s growing household toilet service, EkoLakay, is provided with an in-home toilet, toilet maintenance services, and weekly waste collection. Each month EkoLakay customers pay a small service fee, and with cost reductions and innovations, we believe that this service fee will ultimately fully cover the cost of providing EkoLakay.

• Waste Transformation: 100% of the waste from SOIL's toilets are collected and transported to to one of SOIL's waste treatment sites. Waste is transformed into rich, agricultural-grade compost through a carefuly monitored process that includes thorough lab testing. The composting process adheres to the World Health Organization’s standards for safe treatment of human waste, is affordable, relies on minimal water, and ultimately transforms wastes into valuable environmental resources.

• Agricultural Growth: SOIL produces an increasing quantity of Konpòs Lakay, SOIL’s EcoSan compost, each year. Producing affordable, organic compost that can be used to restore soil fertility helps farmers grow more food and improves the viability of reforestation efforts in Haiti. Healthier and more resilient soils are also less vulnerable to natural disasters because strong soils are less susceptible to drought and erosion. The use of compost for reforestation further stabilizes soils, helping to prevent catastrophic floods and mudslides. We believe that by helping farmers produce healthy, locally grown crops and working to create fertile and resilient soils across the country, Haiti can once again be a place of agricultural bounty

• Education and Outreach: SOIL is committed to sharing knowledge, because when more people are empowered through education, they can accelerate change. SOIL provides capacity-building seminars on ecological sanitation throughout Haiti. In one community, Shada, SOIL is directly providing public toilets to one of Haiti’s most vulnerable communities.

In addition to their household sanitation program, SOIL is spreading the word about EcoSan by providing commercial sanitation. Using traditional portable toilets retrofitted to use ecological sanitation technology, EkoMobil provides safe, dignified toilets and waste treatment services for community fairs, construction sites, and other events. These toilets help SOIL earn revenue while also demonstrating the desirability of EcoSan toilets to a larger market base in Haiti.

SOIL is dedicated to financial efficiency, local sourcing, and transparency. Over 93% of every dollar contributed goes directly to their sanitation and environmental programs in Haiti.

• +5,940 people accessing SOIL EcoSan toilets through SOIL's growing EkoLakay social business pilot
• An endless supply of compost sold for agricultural and reforestation efforts around Haiti (+84 metric tons of compost sold in 2017)
• +1,000 people benefiting from SOIL’s education programs and resources each year
• 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, treating thousands of gallons of waste each month.

SOIL’s composting waste treatment system emits significantly fewer greenhouse gases than traditional waste treatment methods, and SOIL is engaged in several research collaborations with US universities, including University of Hawaii and Stanford University, to evaluate the climate implications of composting waste treatment.

Since 2012 the project has won many national and international Awards in recognition for its achievments. To see full list, click here: https://www.oursoil.org/honors-and-awards/

SOIL's success is committed to:

https://www.oursoil.org

SOIL 2017 Annual Report, available at: http://www.oursoil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2017-SOIL-Annual-Report.pdf