Kotka’s free flea market has become a regular meeting point between recycling and informal welfare, with customers sometimes arriving two hours before opening to secure a place in line. The volunteer-run service in the southeastern Finnish city distributes donated goods at no cost, while growing demand has coincided with a sharp rise in local homelessness.
The flea market is operated by Kotkan kierrätys ja avustus ry, a local recycling and aid association. According to Yle, only 20 customers are allowed inside at a time, with each group given 15 minutes to choose what they need.
Each customer can leave with one bag of goods. Clothes, household textiles, dishes, toys and other everyday items are all available for free.
Association chair Päivi Pirtilä told Yle that queues form every day the flea market opens. On some days, the first customers arrive around two hours before the doors open.
Kotka’s free flea market can draw hundreds of customers
The flea market operates four days a week for a few hours at a time. Pirtilä said that during a three-hour opening period, the association can receive around 200 customers, although that figure is the organisation’s own estimate rather than an independently recorded count.
Demand comes from a broad range of residents, including families with children, students and older people. Autumn clothing is particularly sought after at this time of year, while students often look for household textiles, tableware and bedding.
The project also functions as a conventional recycling centre. Some visitors bring objects they no longer need and take other items home with them, creating a system based almost entirely on redistribution rather than buying and selling.
Similar initiatives appear to be uncommon in Finland. According to the Finnish Association of Recycling Centres (Suomen kierrätyskeskusten yhdistys), it is not aware of equivalent permanent operations elsewhere in the country. Some recycling centres have rooms with free goods, while associations occasionally organise individual giveaway events, but this does not mean that the Kotka project is necessarily unique.
Volunteers are also providing direct aid
The current flea market was established by Kotkan kierrätys ja avustus ry in 2022, following an earlier free flea market founded by local mothers in 2017.
The association now has around 30 volunteers, who sort donations, organise the shelves and prepare aid packages for people in difficult circumstances.
These packages can include hygiene products, kitchen supplies, bedding, clothes, pillows and rugs. The organisation has provided assistance to homeless people and to residents who have lost their homes in fires.
This gives the project a role that goes beyond the circular economy. Goods that might otherwise be discarded are redirected towards people who need them, effectively linking recycling with a small-scale, volunteer-based form of social support.
Homelessness in Kotka has more than doubled
The increased demand comes as homelessness in Kotka has risen particularly sharply.
Official figures from Finland’s Centre for State-subsidised Housing Construction show that 80 people were recorded as homeless in Kotka in November 2025, compared with 36 a year earlier, an increase of 122 percent. Relative to population, Kotka had 1.6 homeless people per 1,000 residents.
The increase was part of a broader reversal in Finland. There were 4,579 homeless people living alone in 2025, up 20 percent from the previous year. National homelessness had already started rising again in 2024 after more than a decade of decline.
Municipalities responding to the national survey cited changes to social security, rising housing and living costs, unemployment, rent-payment problems and shortages of affordable housing among the factors behind the increase.
In Kotka, the association says that this pressure is visible directly at the flea market. Pirtilä told Yle that homeless residents had recently come to the organisation looking for clothes.
The flea market itself may soon need a new home
Despite growing demand, the future of the free flea market in Kotka is uncertain.
The association currently uses a building owned by the City of Kotka without paying rent. The arrangement will last only until the building is demolished. According to Yle, there is no confirmed demolition timetable yet.
Pirtilä said the prospect of losing the premises has caused concern because the association does not know where the flea market could move next.
For now, the queues outside the building provide an unusually visible indication of demand. The project was created around recycling, but its current role also reflects a wider social reality in Kotka, where donated clothes and household objects are increasingly serving as a form of practical assistance.
