Waste Transformation Service in Port au Prince, Haiti

World Centric + SOIL

$13,191.00 from profits from fiscal year 2017

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 into 100 metric tons of compost each year, transforming a public health problem into an environmental solution. By harnessing the power of cyclical ecological systems, SOIL is building a revolutionary circular sanitation economy that is simultaneously providing affordable and critical sanitation access to more than 6,500 people, growing resilience to climate change, and promoting local economic growth.

World Centric partnered with SOIL in 2016 to help increase the scale of their composting facilities. This years’ project will again expand their capacity for the facility in Port au Prince.

The Impact

Build a compost processing unit with 3 compost bins, platforms for turning, compost, and windrows, along with a drainage system and protective roofing.

Indirect Impact:

• Ability to collect and treat waste from 180 additional EcoLakay toilets, producing 20 more metric tons of compost annually.
• Economic growth in some of Haiti’s most vulnerable communities. SOIL employs 92 full time staff and over 250 part-time contract positions in the sanitation sector. As SOIL’s sanitation businesses grow, more jobs will become available in each of the neighborhoods they serve.
• Ecological benefit from compost that is used to restore soil fertility, grow food, and support reforestation. Compost helps prevent catastrophic floods and mudslides, increases resilience to drought and erosion, and sequesters carbon to help mitigate climate change.
• Increase in health for local communities due to access to sanitation, including reduction in childhood diarrhea and deadly waterborne illnesses.

The Approach

Working with communities to design and test ecologically and socially beneficial solutions, SOIL implements low-cost technologies that are simple, easy to replicate, require minimal water, and provide safe and dignified access to sanitation.

Through EkoLakay, SOIL’s household toilet social business pilot, customers pay a small 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 nad transformed into rich, fertile compost.

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.