Drinking a cocktail in Dubai with ice cubes from the Greenland fjords? Absurd, but possible. As reported by the Guardian, Arctic Ice, a Greenlandic start-up, is recovering chunks of ice from icebergs and sending them to luxury bars in the Emirates that use them for their cocktails.
Indeed, the company prides itself on selling ice that has been compressed for millennia, which is completely free of bubbles and melts more slowly than ordinary ice, which has "not been in contact with any soil or contaminated by pollutants produced by human activity." According to Arctic Ice, it is purer than frozen mineral water, which is usually used in Dubai ice cubes.
Read alsoMelting in Greenland could lead to a greater rise in sea level than expected
While this practice may seem absurd, using iceberg ice from fjords in drinks is common in Greenland, and several companies have even tried to export it, so far to no avail.
'Death threats'
The start-up, which only recently shipped its first 20 tons of ice cream, has been the subject of a wave of criticism on social media, at a time when climate change is a major issue. Some of the comments "border on death threats," said the start-up's Danish co-founder Malik V Rasmussen.
Arctic Ice defends itself by saying that its ice cream and the way it does things are "environmentally friendly", without forgetting to remind us that it has committed to becoming completely carbon neutral in the near future.
The start-up launched in 2022 uses a specialized boat equipped with a crane to harvest ice that has not been in contact with either the bottom or the top of the glacier. Pure and completely transparent, it is known locally as "black ice".
A boat journey of more than 16,000 km
Once collected, the ice is placed in plastic crates until the filled boat is taken back to Nuuk, the capital. It is then placed in a container before being shipped to Denmark. Once there, the container is loaded onto another ship that leaves for Dubai for a journey of 19 days and more than 16,000 km.
#capitalisme, ecocidal aberration of
Greenland. Arctic Ice collects ice from the fjords with a crane on a boat. In Nuuk, the company fills a refrigerated container that goes to Denmark before leaving for Dubai where the ice cream is sold. cocktail barsđłhttps://t.co/HWHVByzmTK pic.twitter.com/HqWE04cKjs
â Jerome Duval (@JeromeDuval_) January 10, 2024
Arctic Ice assures that the first stage of transport, from Greenland to Denmark, emits little carbon, with most shipping containers usually leaving the country empty.
While the start-up's main objective is to create new sources of income for Greenland, as the island is financially dependent on Denmark, Malik V Rasmussen assures that he believes he was born to "help Greenland in its green transition". "It's a project within the company, but maybe we haven't communicated it well enough yet," he told the Guardian.