Romain Rouillard / Photo credit: THOMAS TRAASDAHL / RITZAU SCANPIX / AFP
The United Arab Emirates and Greenland don’t have much in common. The two territories, which perhaps have the two most antagonistic climates on Earth, are nevertheless brought together in cocktails served in luxury bars and hotels in Dubai. Some of these drinks are in fact cooled by ice cubes straight from Greenland, by boat, as reported by the British newspaper The Guardian.
This project is that of Malik V. Rasmussen, a Danish entrepreneur, who, via his startup Arctic Ice founded in 2022, prides himself on offering “the purest ice in the world”. “Arctic ice comes directly from natural glaciers in the Arctic that have been frozen for over 100,000 years. These parts of the ice sheets have not been in contact with any soil or contaminated by pollutants produced by human activities,” can – we read on the company’s website.
“Your business model disgusts me”
Collected by a boat equipped with a crane in the Nuup Kangerlua fjord, these pieces of ice floating in the water are then shipped to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, where they are transferred in a refrigerated container to Denmark . The ice is then loaded onto a ship which will take it to Dubai where it will fill the cold rooms of the palaces.
The project sparked a wave of negative comments on social media. Many Internet users point out the cynicism of the founders and consider it inappropriate to do business on the harmful effects of global warming. “Your business model disgusts me. No respect for the Earth and human life,” asserts a woman on Instagram, while another Internet user prefers to use irony. “Great job guys, the greatest idea I’ve seen in 2023. Ice that we need to use every day to meet our basic needs…”.
20 tons of ice exported
According to Guardian, the reactions went even further since the founders claim to have already received death threats. The latter also defend the merits of their project, arguing that the first stage of maritime transport, from Greenland to Denmark, presents a moderate carbon footprint to the extent that the refrigerated maritime containers would have left Greenland anyway. empty, because the territory imports more frozen products than it exports.
As for the most polluting part of the journey, the startup promises to limit emissions through compensation, either through carbon capture and storage, or through innovative technologies. To date, the company has already exported 20 tonnes of ice to the gas emirate.