Generating Organic Compost for Farming in Haiti

* My apologies to the late great James Brown

Here in Port-au-Prince, our customers love Konpòs Lakay – in fact we recently sold out our stock yet again – but there is one regular complaint we were getting: What is with that bag? It’s true. For a product that is all about restoring health to the earth, made by an organization full of people who truly love the environment, it sure had unfortunate packaging. The 5-gallon plastic bags were thin and tore easily, so they were difficult – if not impossible – to reuse. Since our waste treatment site is inside the Port-au-Prince city dump, we know firsthand how terrible it is to send more plastic bags to the landfill. Even aside from the environmental impact, there wasn’t much to love about the packaging. The tiny (yet expensive) sticker didn’t leave us much room for helpful information. Furthermore, our customers aren’t used to calculating in gallons for agricultural products, so determining how many sacks they’d want to order frequently involved a lot of extra math. As with all things SOIL, we did plenty of research, testing, and planning, and now we’re finally ready to debut our new packaging! These new bags are:

• More eco-friendly: the woven polypropylene bags are made from recycled plastic, are durable and reusable, and can even be re-recycled.
• More Informative: the bag has helpful nutrient information and usage guidelines right on the label.
• Bigger: the new bags now match other fertilizer/soil amendment packaging on the market, both in units (weight) and sizes (20-lb and 40-lb).

We’re pretty excited about them, and we think our customers will be, too! And even with all of these upgrades, there’s one thing hasn’t changed: rich, organic compost that’s rebuilding the health of Haiti’s soils!

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