Regenerative Composting Waste Treatment Services for Cap-Haitien, Haiti

World Centric + SOIL

$75,000 from profits from fiscal year 2019

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. While aquatic ecosystems become polluted in Haiti, soil nutrients have been rapidly declining due to erosion and intensive agricultural practices, leading to a loss of biodiversity, vulnerability to climate-related risks, reduced agricultural production, 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 7,000 people in some of Haiti’s most vulnerable communities, SOIL is helping to prevent the spread of waterborne disease while producing 80+ tons of compost a year. Our solution is restorative by nature, simultaneously providing critical basic services, mitigating climate change, protecting ecosystems and promoting local economic growth.

Through EkoLakay, SOIL’s household toilet social business, 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

SOIL will provide full waste treatment for 480 families or 2,880 people (a combined total of 2,000 households) for one year:

• Production of carbon cover material
• Container emptying and sanitizing
• Monitoring of waste through treatment process
• Compost testing
• Sieving and bagging compost

Indirect results

• SOIL employs 71 staff and 100 contract positions in Haiti. As SOIL’s services scale, more employment will become available in each of the neighborhoods we serve.
• SOIL’s toilets are constructed from 100% locally available materials, deepening the positive impact on local economies.
• Ecological outcomes:
  • 40 million gallons of water saved
  • Up to 400% increase in crop yields
  • 20 hectares of badly depleted land in Haiti restored
  • 100 tons of compost produced through a process that emits 250x less methane emissions
  • 650+ tons of waste treated
• By removing waste from communities, we are 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.