User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Samoa

Public toilets in Samoa are found at hotels, restaurants, town centers, markets, sports facilities and tourist areas. Many do not have toilet paper and are composting. The national government created a program called the Garden Toilet, which resulted in the opening of a few public toilets each year on World Toilet Day.

Public toilets
Public toilets were mostly available at hotels and restaurants. They were also available in some local town centers and markets. Otherwise, they are very uncommon. Community toilets in some villages used composting toilets, and toilet paper was not provided. Public toilets in Apia were located behind the clock tower. More modern sports facilities in the 1990s often had public toilets and change rooms.

Two garden toilets were opened at Lepa and Saleaula in 2018 in honor of World Toilet Day in 2018. The Garden Toilet program was created by the National Beautification Committee and the Samoa Tourism Authority (S.T.A.) in collaboration with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (M.N.R.E.) and funded by the European Union. The intent of the program was to open two or three new garden toilets every year, timing the opening with World Toilet Day. The Garden Toilet project launched in 2017, with the first garden toilets opening in  Palauli and Manono  that year. Three public toilet facilities were opened in 2020 in the gardens at Vailima, Fagafau and Saleaumua in honor of World Toilet Day. This brought the total garden toilets to 12 in Samoa, with eight located at Upolu and four in Savai'i.

The Aopo Nature Loo Project resulted in the creation of public toilets in Aopo in 2017, ones specifically aimed at tourists who hiked Mt. Silisili. After McDonald's made their toilets unisex in 2018, they were criticized for making the unsafe for girls and women to use. The fast food chain responded to the criticism by saying it was a temporary measure while construction work took place. Once the work finished in October 2018, the McDonald's had a women's toilet, a men's toilet and an accessible toilet.

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in Samoa
Public toilet access around the world is most acute in the Global South, with around 3.6 billion people, 40% of the world's total population, lacking access to any toilet facilities. 2.3 people in the the Global South do not have toilet facilities in their residence. Despite the fact that the United Nation made a declaration in 2010 that clean water and sanitation is a human right, little has been done in many places towards addressing this on a wider level.

German notions of cultural codes around the usage of public toilets has been exported to many parts of the world as a result of German colonialism, but many places in Africa and the Pacific continue to challenge those norms around cleanliness well into the 2010s.

Foreigners visiting the South Pacific in the 1990s were advised to bring their own white toilet paper, and tampons or sanitary napkins as they were not commonly found in the region. Septic systems and any sewage systems were not strong enough in the 1990s for tampons to be thrown into them.

Around one in three women in the world in 2016 lacked access to a toilet. In developing countries, unisex public toilets have been a disaster because they make women feel unsafe and fail to consider local religious beliefs.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many people in the Pacific region had the misconception that HIV and AIDS could be transmitted by using public toilets.