Greenland startup starts shipping glacial ice to cocktail bars 7,000 miles away in Dubai – claiming the 100,000-year-old material is the ‘cleanest on Earth’

Ice is hardly a scarce commodity, even in a hot, arid climate like Dubai.

But that hasn’t stopped a Greenlandic startup from shipping it to exclusive bars around the city.

Arctic Ice, a company based in Nuuk, the Greenlandic capital, extracts 100,000-year-old ice from Arctic glaciers and exports it abroad for profit.

According to the company, the ice has been compressed for thousands of years, contains no air bubbles and melts more slowly than regular ice.

This should offer punters at Dubai’s top cocktail bars a more luxurious experience, meaning the spirits are less likely to be watered down.

Arctic Ice sources the precious commodity from Nuup Kangerlua, the fjord around Greenland’s capital, Nuuk

On its website, the company calls it “the purest ice in the world, exquisitely sourced from the pristine glaciers of Greenland.”

“Arctic ice comes directly from the Arctic’s natural glaciers, which have been frozen for more than 100,000 years,” the report says.

‘These parts of the ice sheets have not been in contact with soils and have not been contaminated with pollutants produced by human activities.

‘This makes Arctic Ice the cleanest H2O on Earth.’

Arctic Ice co-founder Malik V Rasmussen said he wanted to find a new source of income for Greenland, which is still part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

“In Greenland we make all our money from fish and tourism,” Rasmussen said the guard.

“I’ve been wanting to find something else that we can benefit from for a long time.”

Using a boat with a crane, Arctic Ice retrieves the luxury ice from Nuup Kangerlua, the fjord around the capital of Greenland, Nuuk.

Fjords are the long and narrow arms of the sea that extend from land, often popular cruising locations for tourists.

Using a boat with a crane, Arctic Ice retrieves the luxury ice from Nuup Kangerlua, the fjord around the capital of Greenland, Nuuk

On its website, the company calls it the ‘purest ice in the world’, ‘exquisitely sourced from the pristine glaciers of Greenland’ (archive photo)

Arctic Ice staff are looking for a specific type of ice that has not been in contact with either the bottom or the top of the glacier. This ice is purer but more difficult to recognize in the water.

According to the Guardian, the ice is placed in huge plastic crates and taken back to Nuuk, where it is then placed in refrigerated shipping containers that are shipped to Denmark.

From Denmark, the containers are loaded onto another ship and taken to Dubai, where the ice is sold to bars by a local distributor called Natural Ice.

Although Arctic Ice has only just shipped its first 20 tons of ice, it is being heavily criticized for turning a precious feature of the natural world into a commodity.

Some of this criticism, in the form of comments on social media and private messages, is “bordering on death threats,” the co-founder said.

One person told Arctic Ice: “Shouldn’t you be worrying about the effects of global warming instead of selling glacier water?”

Ice cream is hardly a scarce commodity, even in a hot, arid climate like Dubai, but that hasn’t stopped the Greenlandic startup from shipping it to exclusive bars in the Middle Eastern city (file photo)

As for the carbon footprint of the ice’s journey between Greenland and Dubai, Rasmussen emphasizes that it is low and more environmentally friendly than air intake.

Greenland already ships refrigerated containers, but most are empty because the country imports more frozen products than it exports, he claims.

“Helping Greenland in its green transition is actually what I think I was brought into this world to do,” Rasmussen said.

‘That agenda is running through the company, but perhaps we have not yet communicated it well enough.’

While using glacial ice in drinks is common in Greenland, exporting it for profit around the world is another matter.

It has already been predicted that the Earth could lose most of its glaciers by 2100, thanks to climate change alone.

West Antarctic Glacier is dumping 2.16 BILLION tons of ice into the ocean every year thanks to climate change, a study warns

One of the most feared consequences of global warming is sea level rise, which could inundate hundreds of coastal cities this century.

A primary cause of rising sea levels is the melting of glaciers – slow-moving bodies of ice, mainly found at the Earth’s poles.

Unfortunately, scientists have identified a glacier in West Antarctica that is losing mass at alarming levels as the ice flows out to sea.

This image shows the Cadman Glacier before and after the ice shelf collapse – the part at the end of the glacier where the ice extends into the sea. The image on the left was taken in February 2017; right photo was taken earlier this month

The Cadman Glacier, called the Cadman Glacier, is releasing as much as 2.16 billion tons of ice into the ocean every year due to climate change, they warn in a new study.

As a result, its thickness is steadily decreasing at a rate of about 20 meters per year – equivalent to a five-storey building.

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