100% Pure Sewage Popsicles

Published on by in Non Profit

100% Pure Sewage Popsicles

Three NTUA students create 100 popsicles made from 100 polluted locations in Taiwan.

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Image from PollutedWaterPopsicles Facebook page. 

Summer is here and what would be a better way to cool off than to partake in popsicles made from 100 percent pure sewage water? That is the senior project of three students from the National Taiwan University of Arts (NTUA), who have created 100 special popsicles made from polluted water from across Taiwan.

The art project, called "100% Pure Sewage Ice Works," consists of 100 models of popsicles made from polluted water from 100 different sampling points from around Taiwan, which were then permanently encased in polyester resin. Likes of the Facebook fan page for the art project have doubled within the past 24 hours to over 20,000 as of noon today. 

One of the members of the design team said that previous public information campaign posters were ineffective at getting out the message about water pollution, so making something everyone likes, but that is presented in such a visually and psychologically shocking way should have a bigger impact. 

The water was gathered from ditches, rivers, ports, drainage areas, streams, and then individual popsicles were made from the water collected at each location. However, because ice popsicles are inherently impermanent, they then cast molds of the popsicles and made 1:1 full-scale models of each one with polyester resin.

The results are perfectly preserved popsicles, including all the detritus inside, such as invasive species, industrial waste, and assorted litter. For example, water from Sanchong Riverside Park had a channeled applesnail, which is in the top 100 of Invasive Species Specialist Group's "World's Worst Invasive Species" list.

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Donshi Fishing Port had remains of fishing nets and cigarette butts, while a stream in Hualien had waste wood and pulp. Each popsicle is has a number on the wrapper that corresponds to the order it was sampled and its place of origin. 

The project took a full year to complete, including sampling water, making molds, and customizing the packaging for each popsicle. Hung said as an experiment, they showed the packaged popsicles to some classmates to see their reaction.

As soon as they tore off the the wrapper, everyone had the same initial reaction, "It's so beautiful, it looks really tasty," but then when they found out it was made of sewage, they were frightened and ran away. 

Read more: Taiwan News

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