SOIL (Haïti) - Innovative Waste Treatment Services in Urban Haiti

SOIL Haïti 

The mission of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) is to promote dignity, health, and sustainable livelihoods through the transformation of waste into resources. Their social business model revolves around ecological sanitation, a process in which nutrients from human waste are returned to the soil instead of polluting freshwater resources.

For a small monthly fee, households benefit from an in-home, container-based toilet and weekly waste collection service. The waste containers are picked up from each home every week and replaced with clean containers. The waste containers are then safely transported out of the densely-populated neighbourhoods and taken to SOIL’s centralised waste treatment facility. Waste is treated and transformed into agricultural-grade compost using methods tested for safety by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Eurofins laboratories.

SOIL’s sanitation service currently benefits over 6,000 people, prevents over 500 metric tonnes of waste from polluting water resources each year, and produces over 80 metric tonnes of compost annually, used for soil restoration, increased food production, and improved disaster resilience.

SOIL’s research shows that its waste treatment operation produces up to 92% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional waste treatment technologies.

SOIL’s container-based toilets are better suited than traditional sanitation options for areas at risk of flooding or that have limited space for septic systems and latrine pits. In flood-prone areas, traditional sanitation options like latrine pits will overflow and leach, posing a greater risk to the environment, water resources and people living in the community. Container-based sanitation offers a safer alternative and allows the untreated waste to be sealed inside containers and then transported out of communities to be safely treated.

The Eurofins Foundation has been supporting SOIL since 2019 and, for the 2020/2021, period, support was targeted at the following objectives:

• Provision and expansion of household sanitation service: SOIL currently provides 2,000 households with household toilets and weekly waste collection that otherwise do not have access to improved sanitation. SOIL safely removed over 500 tons of waste from densely populated settlements over the course of time the grant was used; mitigating the risk of water contamination and environmental pollution in vulnerable communities.
• Provision and expansion of waste treatment service: SOIL operates one of only two waste treatment facilities in Haiti and safely treats 100% of the toilet wastes collected in their toilets, transforming it into compost. SOIL produced 124 tons of compost that will be used to reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers and promote soil fertility, water retention, and food security.  
• Supporting innovations in waste-to-resource technology. SOIL worked over this period on several research initiatives and projects designed to improve the efficiency of their service and prepare for future growth, such as the Black Soldier Fly Larvae Production and Expansion and the Windrow Research.
• Strengthening public-private partnership for the sustainable provision of sanitation services in urban Haiti: SOIL works closely with the Haitian government and development banks to create a mechanism for future public financing of sanitation in Haiti which is key to replicability within Haiti and in other fragile states globally. SOIL also built-up key relationships with Haitian stakeholders to strengthen the value of the sanitation service and develop critical partnerships for sustainable impact.
• Continued contribution to sector learning: SOIL works closely with academic partners to produce peer-reviewed research to share lessons learned in Haiti with the global sanitation sector. SOIL published several peer-reviewed studies over this grant period.

The grant also helped SOIL to partner with the Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Tourism, expanding its reach and raising awareness at a national level.

Agricultural production has been on the decline in Haiti for the past 2 decades, coupled with increasing food insecurity. In 2022, Haiti was ranked 116 out of 121 countries on the Global Hunger Index and over 47% of the country faces acute food insecurity (UN).  SOIL’s regenerative waste treatment process is focused on recapturing and recycling nutrients from waste and putting them back into the soil where they came from. The compost produced from waste treatment can be applied to Haiti’s badly depleted soils to promote soil fertility, water retention and improve crop production. SOIL’s compost is a powerful example of how natural ecosystems can transform deadly health and environmental problems into a restorative solution for revitalising degraded soils.

For the 2022/2023 period, the Eurofins Foundation renewed its support for SOIL, and its activities to provide composting waste treatment services in urban Haiti.

One of the main milestones reached this year was the acquisition of additional land adjacent to SOIL’s existing waste treatment facility, providing further space to expand windrow operations. Over this time, SOIL continues to transition away from their bin-composting methodology to windrow composting. This new methodology will allow SOIL to treat and transform waste in 3-4months, as compared to the previous 6-month treatment process. This will allow SOIL to increase efficiency, and accommodate service scale up at their treatment facility. SOIL was operating at over 80% capacity at their facility, treating waste from 2,500 households. With the new treatment method, SOIL will be able to treat waste from over 9,800 households at the same site.

 This project contributes to the following United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals