Transforming Resources: Environmental Health

Ecological Sanitation

Currently, only 16% of rural Haitians and 50% of those in cities have access to adequate sanitation facilities, by far the lowest coverage in the Western Hemisphere. People are forced to find other ways to dispose of their wastes, often in the ocean, rivers, ravines, plastic bags, or abandoned houses. At the same time, agricultural output is low due to poor soil fertility, soil erosion and lack of fertilizers.

Ecological sanitation is a low-cost approach to sanitation where human wastes are collected, composted and recycled for use in agriculture and reforestation. It simultaneously addresses many of Haiti’s most pressing issues: improving public health, increasing household income and agricultural productivity, mitigating environmental degradation, and providing low-cost sanitation for rural communities.

In response to the global food crisis, ecological sanitation is a resource for reestablishing the local food production economy that has been decimated by years of subsidized imports. Given its level of importance as a community priority, ecological sanitation has become a key focus for SOIL/SOL. SOIL and SOL have already installed more than 50 public ecological toilets for schools and community groups in 5 of Haiti’s 10 departments. In the coming year SOIL will focus on three ecological sanitation programs:

Public Dry Toilet Program: The demonstrated success of the ecological sanitation concept in Haiti has created a demand for toilets that we are unable to meet with our current budget. Each week we receive letters of request from local organizations asking us to come and construct a toilet in their community. Although our ultimate goal is to provide families with inexpensive household toilets we would like to continue to build public Ecosan toilets in communities that do not currently have access to sanitation. The public toilets not only provide safe sanitation access they also serve as examples of the Ecosan technology, allowing the community to better understand the technology before it is used at the household level

Urban Household Sanitation In 2009 SOIL started a pilot project for our long term dream of developing an inexpensive household composting toilet system that can be used in urban areas. (Read more about the project: WASH, from the beginning.) SOIL has been working in collaboration with engineers from several US universities to design an indoor dry toilet system. The solid wastes which collect in a bucket will be covered after each use with drying material (ie. sawdust), collected weekly for a small fee, and processed with other organic wastes at a central composting site.

Rural Household Sanitation: In the rural communities of Milot and Borgne SOIL will facilitate the construction of hurricane-resistant arborloos (called TwaletSOL in Kreyol)—shallow pit composting toilets with a moveable superstructure. Our new design, a PVC frame embedded in concrete and covered with roofing sheets, makes these simple toilets more durable and aesthetically pleasing to Haitians while remaining affordable (<$100US). Each time the pit is filled with human wastes, soil, and kitchen scraps, the light-weight superstructure is moved to a new pit. A fruit tree that will provide food and income is planted in the old pit.

Composting of Organics

The majority of sanitation projects carried out in Haiti are implemented without forethought as to how the waste will be treated. Most hygienic toilets flush into rivers or the ocean and latrines are either abandoned when full or emptied, again into rivers or the ocean. SOIL is committed, not only to providing safe sanitation, but also to treating and transforming human waste through the process of composting. We are currently focusing on composting projects at 2 scales: household and community.

Household composting SOIL will focus on developing low-cost composting methods for households in both rural and urban areas and experimental gardens to demonstrate the agricultural impact of the compost. Household composts can also be used in conjuncture with household ecological toilets as a safe way to treat the wastes onsite.

Municipal composting SOIL has begun work on a pilot compost site in Limonade that will be used to treat human wastes from our public toilets throughout the north and the wastes from the pilot indoor toilet project in Shada. We hope that this site will be scalable and in the future can serve to safely and effectively treat the sewage and organic wastes of thousands of Cap Haitian residents. Using household separating toilets, a waste collection and transport system, and an ecological waste treatment facility, sewage, rum processing wastes, garden wastes and market scraps from the city will be transformed through aerobic composting into a high quality agricultural fertilizer. The resulting fertilizer will be tested to ensure that it meets public health standards and then sold to local farmers for a fraction of the cost of imported fertilizers.

Material Reuse and Recycling. In the future SOIL plans to expand our projects to include recycling and reuse of non-organic wastes. We will work with local inventors, identified through our empowerment programs (below) and university students to develop low-cost methods for reutilizing discarded materials.