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Fiji's rural population is decreasing, but solid waste management in rural areas is nevertheless slowly becoming a major concern. Increasing globalization and changing lifestyles have resulted in increased consumption of packaged and processed goods in recent years, including food and other items. Rural areas typically lack appropriate infrastructure and formally organized solid waste management system, resulting in increasing problems relating to solid waste, including impacts on human health and decreasing aesthetic values of rural villages and their surroundings.

Human waste management is a major concern in Tuvalu despite decades of promotion of the use of water-seal flush toilets and septic tank systems as the safest and most hygienic way to dispose of human wastes. These systems were promoted as an alternative to the use of the beach for human waste disposal. Unfortunately, the septic tank-based system was introduced in Tuvalu and many other atolls in the Pacific Islands region without regard to the geophysical characteristics of atolls.

Tonga could make economic savings of approximately TOP 6.5 million through improved solid and liquid waste management nationwide. The estimates are based on some key assumptions about functional relationships between the nature and volume of waste and human health effects, waste and the coastal ecosystem and fisheries, as well as the effects of waste on tourism and the aesthetic value residents place on a clean environment. Given the paucity of scientific information, there is an urgent need to collect solid scientific information about the causal relationship between waste and its direct and indirect effects on fisheries, coastal ecosystems and human health. Despite this limitation, the economic values presented in this study can serve as a powerful advocacy tool to better target education and extension programs that advocate for reduction, reuse, and recycling of waste.