The clink that makes the drink. Ice. Order a soda and ice comes with it. Sit at a booth in a restaurant and a glass of ice water is soon placed in front of you. You fellow conservationists may think that tossing that ice is wasting water. It is, but did you know that having ice in your drink, even if you melt it and drink it, still is a waste of water?
When we think of ice, many of us either have an ice-maker in our freezer or fill a tray with water and let it freeze. We wonder why that ice looks so cloudy while the ice from a restaurant is clear and clean looking. The answer is why you might want to order that glass of water with no ice or your soda with no ice.
Commercial ice makers, the ones that make the nice clear cubes of various sizes, actually use about double the water than what you get for ice cubes. The secret for clear ice is moving water. A pump flushes water over a freezing cold cube tray that is vertical. Water rinses down from the top of the tray and is recirculated. While the pure water freezes clear, the minerals that add cloudiness begin to concentrate in a reservoir that is flushed out after each batch of ice. So for every pound of ice that is made, that much water is flushed out and down the drain. Think of it this way. If your soda cup is half full of ice cubes, it took a full cup of water, or more, to make that ice.
There are a few other things worth knowing. Many soda dispensers have the ice machine on top of the dispensers. This is the most efficient use of water as the ice always comes from the bottom of the storage bin and falls into your soda cup. If you see someone carrying buckets of ice and dumping ice into a dispenser, they are scooping ice from the top of a storage bin. Much of the ice melts on the bottom or turns to poor quality and ends up going down the drain or is discarded.
So, if you want to do your part to save the planet, specifically Waukesha, skip the rocks and order your next drink straight up!
