Colombo Flea Market to tap Sri Lanka’s potential to achieve best practice of sustainability in Asia

The Colombo Flea Market will be held for the sixth consecutive time on the 5th of June at Jayawardene Hall Colombo in celebration of World Environmental Day. The founder and visionary behind this concept and the Sustainability Hub, Dr. Sabine Samarawickrama, recently shared her thoughts with the Daily FT on what inspired her to organise a market of second-hand goods. 

With recent climatic changes and hazardous natural disasters, Samarawickrama stresses the importance of approaching life sustainably. As a consultant for sustainable development working with the business sector, multilateral organisations and civil society on projects involving sustainable consumption and production, sustainable supply chain development, renewable energy, and social integration, she comments on the massive potential in Sri Lanka to engage in more sustainable practices and achieve long-term development goals through this. A firm believer of team-work and uniting people, Sabine asserts that Sri Lanka is already blessed with treasure; its people. The Colombo Flea Market and the Sustainability Hub are only beginning steps in her work towards educating and making the country aware of recycling, re-using and up-cycling. 

Following are excerpts from the interview. 

By Hiruni Dabarera

Q: We hear ‘sustainability’ everyday. What is ‘sustainability’ and why is it needed in the context of the modern world?

A: There are a lot of interpretations about sustainability and usually what we understand of it is that we have to treat our environment, society and economy in a way that allows future generations to benefit from it in the same way that we do. Companies might look at it and say that it means business can go on forever, but that is not fully correct. It also about whether business can go on by not harming the environment and even facilitating the protection of the environment. In my point of view there is nothing in this world which can work without sustainability. This thought of, “how can I treat my social and natural environment and how can I earn enough to sustain myself and my family”, is present in everything. Nowadays, everybody is aware of it owing to drastic climate changes and the energy crisis. At least, after the recent discussions on the SDGs, the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, the topic is largely discussed in business and society and now everyone is familiar with the concept. A trend I see nowadays among leading companies is that while heading non-renewable energy sources like crude oil or coal they also invest in renewable energy solutions like solar power or wind power. 

Q: What is the Sustainability Hub and what work do you do?

A: Through the Sustainability Hub my hope is to bring people together. When I first came here to Sri Lanka in 2008 it certainly was a very different situation. After sometime I felt that I was the only one who knew about sustainability - which I now know now is not true. During those days people would ask me what I was working on and nobody understood. I even carried out a survey in 2009 with corporate representatives and their knowledge on sustainability was very limited. But MAS already had a green factory at this time and stood out as one of the few companies that were focused on sustainability from the start. Most people found this a weird concept. However, with time I realised that Sri Lankans do have sustainable approaches when working. It’s just that they were not aware of what it meant and also they were not working together. They do try to promote and work on so many initiatives but they do not make the public aware of their sustainable approaches. I believe this was due to their inability to present what they were doing. Through my hub, people who are interested in sustainability have monthly meet-ups and share with each other the different sustainable initiatives that they are currently working on or hoping to work on. Our members are from diverse fields ranging from bankers, the business community, and university professors to even marine biologists and media personnel. We don’t have an agenda as such, we only create a platform for people to meet and exchange ideas on sustainability. During these meetings we also ask the people to present what they are doing. We also did two trips, one to MAS and one to Coca-Cola. It was then that we started the ‘Colombo Flea Market’.

Q: What is the Colombo Flea Market? What do you sell?

A: The concept of the Colombo Flea Market was born when I wanted to sell stuff that I no longer wanted but somebody else could use. In my native country Austria, and around the world, these types of markets are very common. In Sri Lanka house clearance sales are held when people leave the country and then there are websites like wow.lk or ikman.lk. There were various platforms that promoted this concept but no markets. We promote this market as an enjoyable social event that the whole family can come to and enjoy. We also take the effort to provide music and food to our customers. The first market was held at Girls Friendly Society Hall in 2014 and at the beginning people were very critical of it saying nobody wanted to buy second hand stuff. But I firmly stood by my opinion. I thought, “I don’t care and even if people don’t come we’ll give it a try”. Luckily, so many people turned up and the hall was too small for the crowd. Next, we shifted to the Jayawardene Hall because this was a different concept to Good Market where there are professional vendors. There, the focus is small businesses. In our case our sellers are private individuals. People have different budgets and they put a lot of effort to remake the items that they present for sale. They would cut it, clean it, polish it or colour it to make it more presentable to their buyers. Hence, I felt that I would not be doing justice to these sellers if I don’t provide them a suitable atmosphere to sell their goods. I feel that customers are more attracted to a comfortable shopping atmosphere even though it’s rather costly on us. We are not profit-motivated; we only want sustainability. That said, it’s good if there are funds left which we can use for our other events. 

Q: How do you get vendors to the market?

A: We sell stalls, so everyone who wants to come and sell can send an e-mail and book a stall. We allow only second-hand goods which means whatever is in your possession, even something that is new, which you don’t want or like but can be of use to someone else. Even if the goods are organic, hand-made or for charity we do not allow to sell them as retailers would in a shop. If people do send us an e-mail like that we will refer them to the Good Market or the Hippie Market. We really want people to sell because everybody is stocking everything at home and the purchasing pattern of people is such that they buy more and more without using what they buy. Through our concept we want people to change in a way that they are encouraged to maintain sustainability. Vendors at the start open their stalls hoping to sell the goods at least at half the price they bought it for but when no one wants to buy it at that price they end up selling it to the price the customers demand. Through this, people realise how much money they actually spend on things that they do not really need. This is what happens with the vendors. On the other hand they are happy that they earn money through stuff that is otherwise lying around at home. Money gives them an incentive to let go of things. 

Q: What is your target market? Are they Colombo’s posh, ‘organic minded’, ‘go green’ crowd?

A: No, what we figured from our previous markets was that our customers are from all kinds of economic levels. We do get the upper-social class who are aware of the concept but we also get a lot of people who are from lower social classes. They come and buy stuff that they could have never afforded otherwise. As a consumer, the price range of goods is usually over Rs. 1500 – many people can’t afford that. However, at our market, they can get an almost-new clothing item from a luxury shopping mall at around Rs. 200. That’s why I really love this concept. I want things to shift from the upper-class to other levels of society. This market is a good example for sustainability because there are no new resources and we are selling only what is already there. 

Q: How safe is it for another person to use something that is thrown away, for example electronics? Also how energy efficient do you think these used products can be? Don’t you think it does more harm than good in the long run?

A: If I have a used laptop, I have many possibilities: give it to someone, donate it or recycle it. What we also do at the market is link up with the recycling communities. We collect cardboard, plastic and e-waste. The e-waste we give to ‘Think Green’ which is an e-waste recycler. Last time, we had someone who dumped boxes of e-waste like a cooker and an iron, the recycling company happily took everything. Things that are broken are not allowed to be sold at our market. We have sold used cameras, iPads and mobile phones. However, it’s been limited to this and we haven’t received any large-scale electronics like refrigerators, televisions etc.

Q: There must be a lot of garbage collected at the market, how do you tackle that? What do you do with the unsold products at the market?

A: We are quite strict with vendors. We don’t allow them to give plastic bags as we want zero waste. There are no leftovers because whatever our vendors could not sell can be donated as we are linked up with many charities or they can take it back home and sell it next time. Some are cheeky enough, they do hide some waste under the stalls but these are only things like boxes or hangers that we clean up afterwards. I always inform them in advance that they are not allowed to waste. Some of the vendors really try to be as eco-friendly as possible. They would paste cardboard tags on the items in place of plastic.

Q: What are the most sold items at your market?

A: We get a lot of household items like pots, pans, vases, frames and then pillow cases, also rice cookers and things for the kitchen. We also sell books and DVDs. The largest items we had were childrens’ toys like bicycles or huge bean bags. We don’t get many furniture or large electronic items. But they can always sell them on our website. We actually want people to come and enjoy the event. We have a lot of up-cyclers. ‘Up-cycling’ means using something which is waste and making something new out of it. We have designers who take used clothes and make creative bags or notebooks out of it. They turn old glass bottles into drinking glasses and old paper into jewellery. There are artists who paint t-shirts, cut them and create a funky top out of it. This time we have a new lady coming who does batik and will colour old cloth, making it new and different. 

Q: What are your plans to expand this project? Any plans to move out of Colombo?

A: We have some ideas and I’m currently awaiting funds for them. I am hoping to introduce a new application which brings all the people who are interested in sustainability in Sri Lanka together. Through this we will have a database. By connecting people I make this information accessible to everyone.  I believe that by working together we can do so much more. What I want to see is what people already know and share these concepts with others through a platform. However, I will not hold flea markets island-wide. I think it’s better to build the community and let it run itself. I want people to understand the benefits of re-using and do it on their own. But first, I need to know who is there. So this application will hopefully help me achieve it.