The Sewer Soaperie: Cities, Oil and Human Behavior Favorite 

Many artists are inspired to bring climate change into their work after a direct experience with it. Catherine Sarah Young hopes her work helps people understand and talk about their experiences with climate change.
Originally from the Philippines, she first began to grapple with climate change in her work as a reaction to Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones in history, which struck the Philippines in 2013. In her piece, “The Sewer Soaperie” (2016), Young turns raw sewage into luxury soaps.

She wrote: “During extreme storms in the Anthropocene, many cities are ill-equipped to handle the flooding that follows. One reason is the coagulated grease in the sewers, with some as big as airplanes, leading these to be named ‘fatbergs.’ Among the sources of grease is used oil that is poured into sinks, which drains into the sewers and hardens in the pipes. The world already experiences extreme storms because of climate change, and cities will experience even more flooding that is exacerbated by human actions. The project raises awareness on this by taking the grease from different points of its journey— from the used cooking oil that restaurants throw in the sewers, to raw sewage, to grease that hardened in open pipes. These were sterilized and turned into luxury soaps through the artist’s experiments. The project started in Medellin, Colombia during a residency and continued in Manila, Philippines.”