A manicure set, a Louis Vuitton handbag, a complete glass set featuring Winnie the Pooh and an album of the collected songs of Rod Stewart -- all this could be purchased for a paltry sum at the Flea Market Festival held at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall yesterday.
Organized by the Green Consumers' Foundation, the festival was held as part of activities for Clean Up the World Day, an international campaign initiated by the Australian activist Ian Kiernan to encourage communities everywhere to clean up the environment.
The campaign has further designated the third weekend of September as Clean Up weekend.
Despite occasionally heavy rain and wind, the event drew strong participation from individuals and private corporations.
While individuals take advantage of the opportunity to offload old or seldom used family items and to earn a buck or two, corporations use the festival as a way to raise funds for charity.
The foundation originally planned the festival as a bartering event, where people could assemble to trade their bric-a-brac. But according to secretary-general Ho Chin-san (
Nonetheless, Ho said that the event reiterates the importance of recycling.
Ho, pointing to two bicycles donated by the environmental protection department of the Taipei City Government, said they were assembled with usable parts taken from five different second-hand bicycles.
Ho added that many families and organizations have items that might be decrepit and rarely used, but there are few flea markets available for them to be circulated and reused.
"It's a win-win situation to both those who give their stuff away, and those who pick up something `new,'" Ho said, "One side is happy that they finally get rid of their junk, and the other side thinks they have found a treasure."
Huang Hui-hua (
By the time she talked to the Taipei Times, she had already bought a handbag for herself.
"[The bag] is a real bargain," she said, "They should have events like this more often."
Cadie Tseng (曾凱蒂), a seller and a resident of Tianmu, said she collected items for herself as well as her four siblings and put them on sale at the market. Her stock of goods included shoes, jeans, handbags and even baseballs with the signatures of professional players in Taiwan.
"You can find stuff that is beyond your imagination," she said.
Besides trading used items, some used the event to demonstrate newly-developed "green" products.
Countries around the world held separate events in observance of Clean Up the World Day yesterday.
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