These students are making beautiful popsicles with a disgusting ingredient for a good cause
These colourful popsicles look like artisanal dessert treats.
But those little dots aren't chia seeds. They're sewage.
Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui and Cheng Yu-ti, students at the National Taiwan University of Arts, collected sewage runoff from 100 locations in Taiwan to make these popsicles.
Their frozen creations were then replicated with transparent polyester resin. The replicas are accurate down to the tiniest detail -- from the colour of the popsicles, to the detritus found in the samples.
The team even designed wrappers that reflected the various locales where the water samples were taken.
The result is an Instagram-worthy creation that makes you think:
In an interview with Mashable, Hung said that the team wanted to use the popsicles to emphasise the importance of clean water.
"It's made out of sewage, so basically these things can only be seen, not eaten," Hung said.
Popsicles are also mostly water, Hung added. "(Having) pure water, a clean water source is actually very important," she said.
When people look at these popsicles -- they may look nice, but they portray a different, scary reality, she adds.
Taiwan often experiences periodic droughts, and its waterways, like most other water sources, have been impacted by trash and human detritus.
About 90 percent of the trash the team encountered in the water samples were plastic, including wrappers for bamboo chopsticks, bottle caps, plastic bags and plastic bottles.
The team had to buy a throwaway freezer to make the sewage popsicles, as the project -- as you can imagine -- smelled pretty bad.
The team has made a visual directory that lists what each popsicle contains.
The popsicles attracted a mixed reaction after being showcased at a design event in Taipei.
People said thought the concept was cool, but were also simultaneously disgusted when they saw what each popsicle was made of, she said.
I am an intern with Mashable Asia, focusing on viral news, lifestyle news and feature news in the region.
