There's cash in trash. Democracy, too, if done right.

People collect trash in 2025 along a polluted shore as part of a coastal cleanup in Navotas, a city near Manila. Community trash pickup is part of a self-government movement in some urban neighborhoods of the Philippines.The future of democracy is in the trash. And that might be a very good thing. The essence of democracy is not elections — which tend to produce oligarchs and conflict — but, rather, self-government to solve community problems. And refuse, in all its forms, is now inspiring some of the most significant innovations in democratic governance around the world. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Indeed, there may be no greater democratic platform than waste management for boosting community problem-solving, deliberation, civic technology, and engagement between regular people and their governments. Waste self-government might be strongest in the barangays, or urban neighborhoods of the Philippines. You can see one award-winning, democratic approach to trash in Lipa, 90 minutes south of Manila. A decade ago, Lipa was notorious for trash in streets, lots and landscapes. National health authorities cited the general filth as a contributor to the city's relatively high rates of dengue fever. Lipa had expensive contracts with a third-party, private waste company, which couldn't keep up with the trash. City officials noticed that rural communities in the area, which handled their own trash pickup in informal networks, were often cleaner. Advertisement Article continues below this ad So, the mayor and city government decided to let each of Lipa's 72 barangays handle its own trash pick-up. To incentivize this local work, the city compensated individual residents and neighborhoods for the trash that they collected, separated and transported to designated city locations and local companies. Over time, neighborhoods organized residents to do the collection work. In most cases, individual residents brought trash to a designated location on a community-determined schedule, where volunteers separated it into recyclable and residual waste. Then vehicles belonging to residents or local businesses would carry waste to the recycling companies or junk shops that paid the most for it. Compensation was not always in cash. People took residual trash to the Republic Cement and Building Materials company, which paid them with bags of cement that could be used for home or neighborhood construction. In cooperation with the city government, Lipa residents soon devised a popular credit-for-garbage points system that they used to buy appliances, cellphones or laptops. This tech helped solve problems beyond trash, from air pollution to remote learning during emergencies. Neighborhood trash networks emerged as de facto community governments. Lipa's program won the city a top democracy award from the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy, an affiliate of the world's largest municipal association, United Cities and Local Governments. (I met Lipa residents involved in the program at a UCLG event.) Lipa is hardly the only place of innovation. Brazil and Colombia are known for local waste-picker cooperatives, governed democratically by participants. Indonesian cities have pioneered the bank sampah, or waste bank concept, in which residents receive payments to individual savings accounts based on the weight of the trash they turn in. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Governments encourage such programs for three big reasons. First, China's 2018 decision to stop accepting recyclables and other trash from outside the country has forced more communities to handle their own trash. Second, national governments, beset by political conflict, are providing less support for local-level services. And third, trash self-governance is increasingly seen as an anti-corruption measure, allowing everyday people to replace waste-hauling contractors that can have ties to organized crime, according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime. Trash democracy is appearing all over the world, but local governments in the Philippines have pursued it with particular fervor, making adjustments through ups and downs. At a recent municipal conference in Morocco, I met Mayor Faustino 'Inno' Dy V, who is president of the Philippines' league of municipalities and previously led a national group of neighborhoods. Last year, he was elected mayor of Echague, a city of 91,000 in the province of Isabela. Dy said that, for all the successes in municipalities across the country, his city was among those that have struggled to sustain community participation in garbage collection and segregation of daily food waste. So, he added a decentralized, community-based market system called Bigas Palit Basura, or Recyclables for Rice. Echague residents exchange sorted recyclables — such as plastic bottles, glass and cardboard — for a corresponding allocation of rice. Mayor Dy argued that Recyclables for Rice addresses food security and inflation by providing a staple food to families and helps put a tangible economic value on recyclable waste. Advertisement Article continues below this ad To help improve the program and make it endure, the mayor added, the city expanded its reach into local public schools via a recycling competition. Students have become primary collectors of recyclables as they compete for collection points. About Opinion Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership. Read more about our transparency and ethics policies Recyclables for Rice has gone so well that neighboring municipalities have joined. Through the municipal league, Dy is now preparing to take the program nationwide. May pera sa basura is now a popular Filipino phrase that means: There is cash in the trash. There's democracy in trash, too.