Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods or SOIL is an American nonprofit developmental aid organization co-founded by Sasha Kramer and Sarah Brownell in 2006. Its goal is to develop integrated approaches to the problems of poverty, poor

public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...

agricultural productivity Agricultural productivity is measured as the ratio of agricultural outputs to inputs. While individual products are usually measured by weight, which is known as crop yield, varying products make measuring overall agricultural output difficu ...

, and

environmental destruction Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as quality of air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems; habitat destruction; the extinction of wildlife; and pollution. It is defined ...

in Haiti. SOIL's efforts have focused on the community-identified priority of increasing access to ecological sanitation, where human wastes are converted into compost. More than 20,000 Haitians are currently using SOIL ecological sanitation toilets.Christine Dell'Amore
"Human Waste to Revive Haitian Farmland?"
''The National Geographic'', October 26, 2011

Programs

* EkoLakay. EkoLakay is a container-based household sanitation service in Cap-Haitien and Port-au-Prince. Clients pay a low monthly service fee of around US$4. The service includes toilet rental, the provision of at least one bucket of carbon-based cover material each week, as well as weekly pick up of buckets full of wastes. SOIL designs and builds low-cost ecological sanitation toilets made from locally available materials. The primary design that SOIL builds are called

urine diversion Urine diversion, also called urine separation or source separation, refers to the separate collection of human urine and feces at the point of their production, i.e. at the toilet or urinal. Separation of urine from feces allows human waste to ...

, or dry toilets that separate the

urine Urine is a liquid by-product of metabolism in humans and in many other animals. Urine flows from the kidneys through the ureters to the urinary bladder. Urination results in urine being excreted from the body through the urethra. Cellular ...

and the feces through the use of a specially designed toilet seat. The sterile urine is used directly as a fertilizer or diverted into soakaway pits. The feces is treated through a process of managed

composting Compost is a mixture of ingredients used as plant fertilizer and to improve soil's physical, chemical and biological properties. It is commonly prepared by decomposing plant, food waste, recycling organic materials and manure. The resulting m ...

to ensure that all

pathogens In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a ger ...

have been killed and the resulting compost is safe for agricultural use. *EkoMobil. EkoMobil is a mobile toilet service that SOIL offers to construction sites, cultural events, and others in need of mobile sanitation. EkoMobil uses the same container-based ecological sanitation technology as EkoLakay. *Compost. Waste collected from SOIL's ecological sanitation toilets, as well as the ecological sanitation toilets of other organizations in Haiti, are treated through a process of managed

thermophilic A thermophile is an organism—a type of extremophile—that thrives at relatively high temperatures, between . Many thermophiles are archaea, though they can be bacteria or fungi. Thermophilic eubacteria are suggested to have been among the earl ...

composting at SOIL's composting waste treatment sites. The process exceeds standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the safe treatment of human waste. SOIL tests all wastes in their laboratory before bagging and selling it under the brand name Konpòs Lakay. Since 2006, SOIL has produced over 250 metric tons of compost. *EcoSan Education. In 2011, SOIL published The SOIL Guide to Ecological Sanitation. This document describes SOIL's five years of ecological sanitation experience in Haiti. It covers topics such as toilet designs, management strategies, composting techniques, and lessons learned. The SOIL Guide is available in English and Haitian Creole.

Past Programs

* Permaculture. Starting in late 2013 SOIL began attending

permaculture Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principle ...

design courses at the 2013 International Permaculture Congress in Cuba. They designed two farms according to permaculture principles, the SOIL office, farm, and the KOMOP farm. KOMOP is a contraction of Komite = Committee and Opòtinite = Opportunity. * Public Toilets. SOIL built the first ecological sanitation toilet in Haiti in 2006 and went on to build toilets around northern Haiti in partnership with many local community groups and international organizations. * Emergency Sanitation. Following the

2010 Haiti earthquake A catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. The epicenter was near the town of Léogâne, Ouest department, approximately west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's c ...

, SOIL expanded to Port-au-Prince.Amy Bracken
"Waste Not: Composting Toilets in Haiti"
''PRI's The World", June 2, 2011''

References

External links

Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods
{{charity Organizations established in 2006 Charities based in California Development charities based in the United States Foreign charities operating in Haiti

Programs

Past Programs

See also

References

External links