Greenland company roasted for exporting ice to Dubai cocktail bars

Start-up Arctic Ice has been harvesting chunks of ice broken off icebergs in the fjords of Greenland and shipping them to luxury restaurants in the United Arab Emirates. While the company says its activities don't harm the environment, it's been forced to fend off a barrage of criticism.

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Icebergs float in Disko Bay, Ilulissat, western Greenland, on June 28, 2022. © ODD ANDERSEN / AFP

Arctic Ice, a company from Greenland, picks up the ice that breaks off icebergs – which have themselves detached from larger, ancient glaciers – to send it by boat to the United Arab Emirates via Denmark.

In Greenland, using this source of fresh water is a common practice. Several companies have made it their business.

According to Artic Ice's website, its ice is "the purest in the world", and comes from natural glaciers that have been frozen for more than 100,000 years. 

"These parts of the ice sheets have not been in contact with any soils or contaminated by pollutants produced by human activities. This makes Arctic Ice the cleanest H20 on Earth," it claims.

French glaciologist Heïdi Sevestre, who works at AMAP – the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme – confirms that.

"It is truly pretty magical because such old ice melts very slowly. It also has these air bubbles that kind of pop up when you put it in a glass," Sevestre told RFI.

"Water sommeliers often give the best medals to water coming from glaciers," she adds.

Glaciologist Heidi Sevestre on assignment in Greenland. © Heidi Sevestre

But Sevestre believes that it's not "a reason good enough" to send it to Dubai, more than 7,000 kilometres away.

"It can only be detrimental for the environment, even though the company is trying very hard to offset its carbon footprint as much as possible in the first place," she says.

"I have a feeling that they might be underestimating the negative impact of their activities on the environment."

A supersized cube of ice (not from Greenland) at the cocktail bar at the Marriott Resort Palm Jumeirah hotel in Dubai. © RFI/Amanda Morrow

The company's managers insist they are committed to becoming fully carbon neutral thanks to new carbon storage techniques.

But glaciologist Sevestre is not convinced.

"We know that 'the best tonne' of CO2 is the one that we don't emit in the first place," she says. "And this technology of carbon sequestration and storage is still really energy hungry."

Global warming

Greenland is one of the planet's fastest-warming regions. 

A study by Nasa released on Wednesday in the journal Nature showed that climate change has caused Greenland's ice sheet to lose 20 percent more ice than previously thought.

Over the past two decades, the Arctic has lost about one-third of its winter sea ice volume, largely due to a decline in sea ice that persists over several years. © AFP - Kerem Yucel

But for Sevestre, "we shouldn't pick out the wrong target".

She points out that one small company in Greenland is not the reason ice is melting in the first place: "When you think about what the fossil fuel companies are doing it is absolutely gigantic."

Even so, "we don't need more ice cubes from Greenland in Dubai", Sevestre insists.

As for Arctic Ice, after exporting 20 tonnes of ice last year the company hopes to win over even more customers.

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