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PacWaste (Pacific Hazardous Waste) is a four year, €7.85 million project funded by the European Union and implemented by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) to improve regional hazardous waste management, in 14 Pacific island countries plus Timor Leste, in the priority areas of healthcare waste, E-waste, asbestos, and integrated atoll solid waste management. Asbestos-containing wastes are a major issue for many Pacific Island countries with a history of use of asbestos-containing building materials in construction. All forms of asbestos are carcinogenic to humans and the inhalation of asbestos fibres that have become airborne can cause serious lung disease or cancers.

Nature provides human society with a vast diversity of benefits such as food, fibres, clean water, healthy soil and carbon capture and many more. Though our well-being is totally dependent upon the continued flow of these “ecosystem services”, they are predominantly public goods with no markets and no prices, so are rarely detected by our current economic compass. As a result, biodiversity is declining, our ecosystems are being continuously degraded and we, in turn, are suffering the consequences.