Who collects most of the garbage in post-election urban Philippines?
The poor. People race for ownership of hanging cloth banners used for candidates' promotion. After cleaning, they sew the wind holes shut then use them to make clothing, curtains, and tablecloths. People also collect glass bottles and tin cans from the ground to sell to bottling companies and
junkyards after rallies and marches.
In the more rural neighborhood in which my grandmother resides in the Philippines, no form of garbage collection exists, mostly due to fraudulent and irregular tax collection within municipalities. My relatives dispose of their household garbage by collecting it over a week or so in a small heap in their yard. Then they burn it, including plastic.
Since my relatives don't have regular garbage collections, they try to get things repaired as much as possible rather than just throw them out and get new ones. This probably has to do with inexpensive labor costs too, but watching a prized stereo or a string of Christmas lights burn in a fire is pretty saddening, to me at least. It's a little easier to just let them get taken away as is to a garbage dump...somewhere.