Narrator: Everything in this shopping mall is recycled.
ReTuna is the first secondhand mall in the world.
Here, shop owners profit
from what other people don't want.
I found some jeans.
A table.
Some really old phones.
You can find everything here.
It's just your imagination.
Narrator: But this is not
your grandmother's antique shop.
The ReTuna mall has a staff of 50 professionals
who clean, fix and tag every item.
That one has to just be cleaned up a little bit.
Narrator: What makes this possible
is the mall's location,
right next door to the municipal recycling center.
And the local government helps pay for it.
It's a model on how to save perfectly good stuff
from being thrown away.
Bye-bye.
Narrator: Something that's a problem
in a lot of other countries.
In the US alone,
11 million tons of clothing, shoes, and textiles
end up in landfills every year.
ReTuna has diverted tons of potential waste
since it opened six years ago,
while generating millions in revenue for small businesses.
Even Sweden's most famous company, Ikea,
refurbishes its furniture here.
So could fixing recycling
be as simple as a conveniently placed mall?
We went to Eskilstuna, Sweden,
nicknamed the world's recycling capital, to find out.
People donate hundreds of used items at ReTuna every day.
They do not get any money for it.
They do it by heart.
Narrator: Sofia has managed the mall since 2020.
It could be anything.
It could be electronics.
It could be furniture.
It could be textiles.
Teamwork.
If you don't need your old clothes
you can just put it in there, and --
One central place to get rid of all your stuff.
And you know that it's going back into use again,
which is really good.
Narrator: Mall workers sort the items
in a massive storage area that's closed to the public.
They'll sort things
based on which one of ReTuna's 14 stores they're headed to.
This is a sewing machine.
This is going to a store called Axelina
that is selling vintage clothing and the textiles.
Narrator: The shops pay nothing for the donated items,
but they do pay rent for their retail spaces.
Here is Axelina's box.
She already has one, two, three, four, five,
six sewing machines that she is going to repair.
Usually it doesn't work.
Sometimes it's just they need a little bit oil,
little bit of love.
Every shop here has their own box
or their own white stripes.
So here we can see it's Ikea's box.
Now the coworkers will try to find out
which furniture comes from Ikea.
Narrator: Every day, Camilla and her team
sort through dozens of items
that could be resold at Ikea's secondhand store.
Here you can see the queue
of stuff that we collected today.
Maybe 40 today,
and that is a really good morning.
Narrator: But not everything makes the cut.
Anything rejected
heads back out to the recycling center next door.
Camilla: So now it's up to the company, Ikea,
to take care of the item that is donated to them.
Narrator: Refurbishers for Ikea's secondhand store
paint and steam-clean furniture.
Almost as clean
as the product that we sell in the department store.
So you're doing really good work, Johann.
Narrator: In other areas, old items can be upcycled
into something new and unique.
I'm building a Barbie house home for my grandkids.
It will be a really good one
to take the Barbie for a good swim.
Narrator: Electronics are also fixed up.
Every day, over 700 people shop at the ReTuna mall.
Shop owners set their own prices,
which means shoppers can always find a bargain.
Reporter: Was it cheap?
Yes, 50 crowns. Perfect.
A lot of the customers have a quite small wallet.
So they would like to get a lot of value for the money.
Narrator: But it's not just about the money.
Other shoppers are just out looking
for that one-of-a-kind discovery.
I bought a picture, 59 crowns.
It's very cheap.
Narrator: ReTuna is part of a larger initiative
to breathe new life into Eskilstuna,
a place that went into decline
after the collapse of its steel industry in the 1970s.
About a decade ago, the city kick-started its economy
by going green.
Now, biogas made from trash fuels buses and heats homes.
Bike lanes wrap around public parks.
The waste processing plan is experimenting
with black soldier fly larva to make compost faster.
And the mall of used stuff is a success.
For the smaller shops, business is booming.
Sales topped $1.8 million in 2020.
Actually, last year
when the pandemic was greater than ever,
we have the highest revenue here for the shops.
Narrator: But the Ikea secondhand store
hasn't broken even.
The company opened the shop as a six-month trial,
part of Ikea's sustainability initiative.
We do have some difficulties with the pandemic
because we don't have that much customer that we hoped for.
I like that it's Ikea.
We don't have Ikea, like the big shop, in our city.
So could the next ReTuna mall be coming to a town near you?
That is the only one in the world, actually,
but I'm really hoping that it's going to be
a lot of it all over the world, of course.
Narrator: But most places aren't like Sweden.
The Swedes have one of the best recycling programs
in the world.
Less than 1% of household waste goes to landfill.
The country's gotten so good at recycling,
it's had to buy trash from other countries
to keep its waste-to-energy facilities humming.
Anybody raised in Sweden
knows how to separate trash into five colorful bins.
The city of Eskilstuna takes it to the next level.
Most households separate their waste
into seven different colored bags.
It's a system that makes it easier
for automated sorting machines to do their job
at the waste plant.
But in the US, where 50% of waste still goes to landfill,
donating used items isn't as commonplace.
Secondhand sales are usually handled by charities
like Salvation Army or Goodwill,
rather than subsidized by the local government
like ReTuna is.
But the desire to donate is shifting stateside.
Drop-off donations to Goodwill and Salvation Army
were up in 2020.
It overwhelmed some Goodwill stores so much
they had to pay a $1 million trash bill
to get rid of overflow items.
And there's a growing trend
towards buying clothes secondhand in the US.
With over 2,600 overflowing landfills
and hundreds of declining malls,
maybe the solution
is just a matter of building both
a little closer together.