Finland: Where second-hand comes first

[Nergal]

 

With her daughter and baby son, Kati Rossi is prowling a suburb of Helsinki in the hunt for a second-hand bookshelf.

Across the road looms a Swedish furniture giant, but Kati is scouring a huge municipal re-use centre instead.

“I don’t want to go to IKEA,” she tells me. "I will find something much more interesting here, and much more original.

“I don’t want to have the same furniture as everyone else. What I buy here will be a fraction of the price and better for the planet.”

As concern grows about the resources we’re using and the CO2 that is producing our goods, does this place hold lessons for the world?

It is one of a network of giant non-profit re-use stores in Finland.

Not the regular sort of second-hand or thrift stores you find on the High Street, but giant supermarkets named Kierrätyskeskus.

The centres repair electrical goods, upcycle some items with their own brand label, and they even have a digital personal shopper – a smart app which predicts the items you’ll want based on previous purchases.

In the furniture section, two friends on a day off from the office are browsing together.

Hannamarie Johansson) tells me: “I’m looking for new clothes for my new job.

"I bring clothes that I don't use any more. You bring something and buy something.”

Pinja Lauria says: “I really like these places. I used to live in Luxembourg where they have second-hand shops – but not like this.

"They just had clothes and books, not furniture. I’m looking for new tables today.”

And it is so much more than a store. Shop manager Peppi Mattila gives me a tour of the upcycling section of the shop, known as Plan B.

It features some stylish classic clothes made from old curtains (they’re not in fashion so they’ll never go out of fashion).

There is also a bench made from a snowboard; a table fashioned from a 40km/h traffic sign; and a stylish tray made from a leather-covered box lid faced with black-and-white cartoon comics.

This range of highly individual items sells for more than standard “second-hand” prices.

Peppi tells me: “We want to create appreciation of old stuff. These things are unique and totally made new. We have to think more and more like this.”

An Instagram blogger Tuire Lindstrom – in an outrageous coat bought second-hand – enthuses over the individuality of stuff here.