Students crowded Malcolm X Plaza today for the annual Earth Week Flea Market. The Associated Students Environmental Resource Center hosted the event from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., highlighting environmental issues while offering students a chance to buy and sell secondhand items.
Oriah Ramos, a fourth-year environmental science student, helped organize the event as part of the ERC. Ramos said that the flea market’s vendor spots were free, making it accessible for student entrepreneurs to sell their goods while remaining sustainable.
“All of these businesses have elements of sustainability, so the packaging is not plastic, it’s reasonable materials,” Ramos said. “People who are making their own goods are reselling clothes, not brand new clothes — so just everything that kind of relates to Earth Week and sustainability.”
Among the student vendors was Isabelle Sanchez, a fourth-year visual communications major who has participated in the event since her freshman year.
“I’ve been selling vintage clothes in high school, and when I came here, I saw ads for the Environmental Resource Center Earth Week Flea Market,” Sanchez said. “I like how it’s all student vendors, and so there’s really this wonderful community of people who all sell stuff together and intermingle and trade, and it’s really great.”
Sanchez spoke about the motivation behind her business model.
“When you donate clothes to Goodwill, they’re not always going to be bought right when you donate them,” Sanchez said. “Often, they end up in foreign countries that America has contracts with, where we send our trash and our used clothes. I decided that instead of doing that, I could come out here with some really cute, special pieces that are made of suede and these really nice materials that you can’t really buy for affordable prices anymore.”
Nicholas Panameno, an apparel design and merchandising student, was another student vendor. He appreciated the opportunity to showcase his business but wanted more market events.
“I wish they could do more. I would have loved that,” Panameno said. “I’m a small business, and I don’t get usually too many gigs like this at [SF] state.”
At the market, Panameno mostly sold original, handmade jewelry. He also had merchandise sourced from other businesses.
“Most of the clothes that I’ve gotten, I got them from Goodwill — mainly Goodwill at Haight-Ashbury,” he said. “And then some of them I got from the ERC team when they had a clothing swap event.”
Tenzing Choeyang, a biomedicine student, described his approach to sustainable retail.
“I thought it was a good opportunity to sell recycled clothing,” Choeyang said. “One thing a lot of resellers do — we usually go to Goodwill, dollar bins, whatnot. Those usually are very early in the morning. A lot of times, the normal consumers there are not willing to wake up that early in the morning, so what I do is I’m pretty much like the middleman. I get up early in the morning, get some stuff, bring it back.”
Shoppers at the event expressed appreciation for the shopping opportunity on campus. Gabriella Chavez, a chemistry student, discovered the market while walking.
“I’ve been interested in buying secondhand for a while, so it was nice to have it just be available,” Chavez said. “It’s kind of hard to go shopping out of your way of your regular schedule, but if you have something made available to you and kind of more accessible, it’s nice.”
Chavez noted the market’s appealing variety and affordability.
“The quality seems great. The selection seemed pretty variable. There’s several tables that I want to go see and they all seem to have kind of a different thing,” she said. “I thought the prices were great. I thought they were more than fair.”
The event had music and students tabling for environmentally-conscious consumption habits, like circular fashion, or the practice of keeping clothing in use as long as possible.
“It’s kind of like anticipating another owner after whatever item you have,” said Jordan Kealey, an environmental science student. “It’s more of a concept of understanding not just to buy and then just throw away.”
While the flea market is currently an annual event during Earth Week, Sanchez expressed interest in seeing it happen more frequently.
“I hope that there’s more events like this,” Sanchez said. “I think having music and being here with all these students — I hope that people see this and different clubs do more events like this.”
This story was updated to correct the formal name for the ERC and to add information about Panameno’s jewelry.
