Millennium Fellowship Sustainability Initiatives Series
Sustainable DKU kicked off the 2025-26 school year with an early Farmer’s Market and Thrift Store event on Wednesday, September 3. The market consisted of food stalls and a thrift store of donated clothes items from the DKU community.
Food stalls included fresh corn and other vegetables sourced from Kunshan’s Yuefeng Dao Organic Farm, locally sourced honey obtained by the Hive Mind club, cookies made by Sustainable DKU members, and a chai and coffee station. This stall featured a unique blend dubbed “Brazikistani Coffee” for its mix of Brazilian and Pakistani cultures and flavors.
Spearheaded by Sustainable DKU, the club’s president Coco Zhang (Class of 2028) says they are aiming to hold a market like this once a month this academic year. Zhang says the importance of the donation-based market is its role in exposing students to sustainability.
“One of the biggest culture shocks I had coming here was I realized that environmental advocacy is a very western concept, specifically very centralized in the U.S.” Zhang says Chinese high school students do not yet have a culture of engaging in extracurriculars, jobs, internships that address environmental advocacy, making it difficult to establish an interest in sustainability prior to starting university.
Zhang emphasized the market’s impact in Kunshan beyond DKU’s campus, highlighting the collaboration with one of Kunshan’s only organic farms, Yuefeng Dao as the source of the vegetables and honey being sold.
Connecting to prior sustainability initiatives on campus, Zhang says coffee is a useful avenue to explore the topic. Last year, Sustainable DKU partnered with Muddy Waters, whose main goal is to raise awareness about the carbon output of coffee beans and production. “We’re not trying to [say] you shouldn’t drink coffee or you can only eat organic vegetables, we’re trying to encourage them to learn about [sustainability] on their own,” Zhang explains, saying the markets are a way to open the door to the discussion.
“The concept of sustainability is very hard to understand,” Zhang says. In her additional role of Chief Sustainability Officer on the DKU Student Leaders Board, she believes being able to see and touch examples of sustainability in a convenient setting on campus helps open people’s minds to issues like overconsumption.
“I think the culture of consumption is interlinked in every aspect of life,” Zhang says. “It’s easy to [say] we can throw this away because it’s so easy to buy something new.” She highlights an experience last semester during move-out where she witnessed the trash bins on every floor of the dorms overflowing with “very good quality usable items.”
As a result, Zhang says she sees the Farmer’s Market as first and foremost a way to engage people. “Climate change, environmentalism, sustainability, they’re all such big, overused words. I don’t expect people to just immediately start eating healthy, or biking everywhere because it’s unrealistic to, but I hope this can be a platform for people to know about [sustainability] and hopefully gain more interest in it,” Zhang says. “You can’t get people to do things unless they care, so we want people to start caring.”
The market took place on the CCT 3rd floor breezeway connecting the East and West halves of the building from 11 am – 2 pm targeting peak dining hours. All signs were created using recycled cardboard boxes. The proceeds from Yuefeng Dao’s vegetable stand were sent back to the farm. The donations from the chai, coffee, cookies and thrift store will go to the Sustainable DKU Club fund.
Sustainable DKU meets every Wednesday from 8-9 pm in CCTE 1011 to discuss campus sustainability initiatives and opportunities.
