“Just up the road from Truittier, the sprawling slum Cite Soleil is known for its extreme poverty and episodic gang violence. But in one important way, it’s just like much of Haiti–the large majority of people do not have toilets, according to Nick Preneta, of the group SOIL – Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods. As a result, Preneta says, human waste here often winds up in the worst places, like the local canal.
The canal is a reeking mass of trash and human waste. It’s even worse in the rainy season, when it sometimes overflows and the raw sewage floods into people’s homes.
SOIL is trying to help change that – and change the way Haitians think about their waste. After the earthquake, a local group asked SOIL to help set up a sanitation system here in Cite Soleil. It would be based not on porta-potties, or even a municipal sewer, but on composting toilets.
Cite Soleil’s composting toilets have separate removable compartments for urine and solid waste. Instead of flushing, users throw in sugar cane scraps from a local rum factory to cover the waste and start the composting process. Prenata says the five composting toilets at this site are used by an estimated 100 people a day. When they fill up, volunteers haul the waste off to a nearby site for what’s called thermophilic composting.” Read the article…