Testing a Social Business Model for Ecological Sanitation

SOIL Launches the Household Toilet Project in Shada, Cap-Haitien Haiti

by Leah Page on Oct 31, 2012

For those familiar with SOIL, the Household Toilet Project probably doesn’t sound all that new. For years we’ve dreamed about a social business model for providing household sanitation in Haiti, and today we are happy to report that our dream has started to become a reality! On October 30, 2012, SOIL and our partners at Re.Source installed the first 25 private household toilets in the Shada neighborhood of Cap-Haitien. The SOIL inauguration hosted yesterday was a combination of celebration and logistics: families signed a contract with SOIL, picked up their toilets, and participated in a SOIL training, but they also sang, danced, and rejoiced with Regional Director Theo Huitema. This dream has been a long time in the making!....(more)

Today is Global Handwashing Day

October 15, 2012 is the 5th anniversary of Global Handwashing Day!!  Handwashing with soap is the “vaccine” that prevents infections.(more)

Recent Interview with water.org Founders

Here is a recent Charlie Rose interview with Matt Damon and Gary White, co-founders of water.org about the global water crisis.  It runs about 30 minutes.

                    http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12577

Gates Foundation makes poop a priority, puts toilet innovation front and center

Posted at 06:05 PM ET, 08/15/2012

By Emi Kolawole

Bill Gates, right, looks at a device that uses solar energy to treat human waste, as he tours the "Reinventing the Toliet" Fair, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2012, in Seattle. (Ted S. Warren - AP)

Bill Gates wants your ideas — ideas to improve the one thing most people probably don’t like to think about until they have to: the toilet.

That’s right, there’s a global problem when it comes to the bathroom throne: not everyone has access to one. More specifically, they lack access to clean sanitation services.

In July 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced an initiative to reinvent the toilet, along with $265 million in grants spread across a variety of efforts to spur greater innovation in sanitation.(more...)

THE HUNGER PROJECT- Oaxaca

I am behind the curve for posting, but I have been very busy.  July 26 I flew to Mexico City to Meet with THE HUNGER PROJECT- Mexico to go on a six day site visit to the Sierra Alto region of the Mazateca near San Jose Tenango.  San Jose Tenango (N18 09.046, W96 43.024) is located in the northern rain forest mountains of Oaxaca.  This trip was focused on visiting four remote communities and performing a site analysis.  The site analysis included many challenges and opportunities.

• Water and sanitation
• Clean cook stoves
• Improving the housing
• Trail improvements
• Understanding their agricultural practices
• Their coffee production

This is a short list of the areas I focused my attention to.  

The trip was AMAZING in that to get to two of the communities we hiked for several hours on some of the most difficult trails I have ever been on. (Blogger will not insert the photo in the correct orientation, it is rotated 90 degrees)!

THE HUNGER PROJECT has been working in these four communities: Rancho Pineda, Cerro Alto, Genova, Piedra de la Luz, for the past several years and now the communities are organized enough to bring i n the technical experts.

This is a GREAT opportunity for us as this is a large long term project starting in these four communities and the vision is to expand to over 100 communities.

After the site visit I then spend a few days in Mexico City (D.F.) working with THE HUNGER PROJECT and eating tacos :)


I am in the middle of writing up the site visit analysis, thus I will post more over the next few weeks.  Hopefully I can find a "workable fix" to the rotated images problem, so you can see the communities.

H2020 - Water Poverty Initiative

H2020’s Water Poverty Initiative uses mobile devices to collect data on water quantity, quality, access and price in communities.  We combine this “crowdsourced” information with data from other sources (like water poverty reports and satellite images) and publish it using a map-based format (more...)

Reinventing the toilet is Bill Gates's new mission

NEW DELHI: Reinventing a toilet that has an operational cost of $0.05 per user, per day, that does not rely on water to flush waste and does not discharge pollutants is Bill Gates' latest mission. According to him, no innovation in 200 years has saved more lives than the toilet.

But the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says 2.6 billion people still don't have a safe "affordable way to poop".

Speaking to TOI on Thursday, Gates said the best toilet right now is the flush toilet and everything else is vastly inferior. "One of my ultimate dreams now is to reinvent the toilet - find a cheaper alternative to the flush toilet that does not require running water, has smell characteristics better than the flush toilet and is cheap."....more