Safe Sanitation Services for Cap-Haitien, Haiti

World Centric + SOIL

$70,000 from profits from fiscal year 2020

In Haiti only 30% of people have access to sanitation and less than 1% of wastes are safely treated. This results in contamination of the water supply and has fueled one of the largest, most virulent cholera epidemics in recent history. As water sources are increasingly polluted from untreated human waste, soil nutrients have been declining rapidly, leading to loss of biodiversity, extreme vulnerability to climate-related risks, reduced agricultural productivity, poverty and malnutrition.

SOIL safely converts human waste to compost, transforming a public health crisis into an environmental solution. In providing sanitation services to more than 9,000 people in underserved communities in Haiti, SOIL is helping to prevent the spread of waterborne disease while producing 100+ tons of compost a year. SOIL is demonstrating it's possible to provide a solution that simultaneously restores ecosystems, creates jobs, protects public health and mitigates climate change.

Through EkoLakay, SOIL’s household toilet service customers pay a small, subsidized monthly fee for a locally-made EcoSan toilet in their home, which is serviced by SOIL each week. The service includes collecting full waste receptacles and replacing them with empty sanitized ones, as well as replenishing a supply of cover material (used for “flushing” a dry toilet). The receptacles are taken to SOIL’s treatment facilities where the waste is safely treated and transformed into rich, fertile compost.

The Impact

World Centric provided 15% of the total cost for SOIL's waste treatment program, which provides services for 1,511 households or 9,000 people for one year:

• Production of carbon cover material
• Container emptying and sanitizing
• Monitoring of waste through treatment process
• Compost testing
• Sieving and bagging compost
• Construction of new compost bins
• Infrastructure support activities

Indirect results

• SOIL employs 52 staff and 100 contract positions in Haiti.
• SOIL’s toilets are constructed from 100% locally available materials, deepening the positive impact on local economies.
• Ecological outcomes:
  • Water conservation using waterless CBS technology
  • 100+ tons of compost produced
  • Restoration of 30 hectares of badly depleted land
  • 400% increase in agriculture yields using SOIL’s compost
  • Climate change mitigation of 126kg CO2 equivalents per capita per year
• By removing waste from communities, SOIL is reducing the spread of waterborne disease. Nearly 95% of families on SOIL’s service share their family’s health and security has improved.

About SOIL

A World Centric partner since 2016.

The mission of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) is to promote dignity, health, and sustainable livelihoods through the transformation of wastes into resources. SOIL achieves this through developing social business models around ecological sanitation (EcoSan), a process in which nutrients from human wastes return to the soil rather than polluting fresh water resources.