Photo:Stephen_Rees, Creative Commons, Flickr
In Minnesota, ice is not only nice, but indispensable.
The interminable winters are made endurable only by hockey, a regional passion that reaches epic proportions during the high-school playoffs. In rinks large and small, equally large and small players (70 years down to seven, the classification for Mini-Mites) battle over a piece of rubber the size of a donut. The oldsters are puffing but determined, the littlest ones determinedly tearless as they fall down and rise again, bloody but unbowed.
It’s a Minnesota tradition that old hockey wounds are displayed as venerable trophies of ice contests which begin almost as soon as children are able to stand upright. Blame it on the long winters, or the prevailing Norse philosophy – which is essentially grim and fatalistic – but those of us living in the Upper Midwest prefer tangible pain to the lingering numbness of winter, and red to white.
Mention hockey in Minnesota, and you will hear thousands of stories from parents whose sons went on to become Minnesota North Star (and, later, Minnesota Wild) players. Mention Herbie Brooks, our native son who went on to lead the U.S. hockey team to victory over the Russians in the 1980 Winter Olympics, and whole rooms will fall into reverent silence.
The hockey tradition owes its roots to the Scandinavians who settled Minnesota. Though Minnesota has since diversified, sporting Hmong, Somali, Ethiopian and Hispanic cultural niches, Minnesota still has its "Swedes" (a generic term for anyone with Scandinavian ancestry), as well as a tenacious contingent of Germans and Canucks (generic for French Canadians). In spite of diversity, the roots remain strong. Is it any wonder, then, that fake ice, a Scandinavian invention, is sweeping this once-frigid northern landscape, where global warming now threatens the only sport worth watching?
North of the 45th parallel, ice used to be a reliable, yearly occurrence. For the past ten years or so, the ice has, so to speak, gone south. Lakes, once deterministic sources of free winter skating, have become stochastic. For the past 10 years (barring this freakingly cold winter) no one dared walk on a lake, let alone put an ice fishing house on one. As a result, keeping indoor ice rinks cold enough to skate is becoming increasingly energy-intensive. Fake ice – which initially seems a very bad idea (since fake anything is commonly regarded as less environmentally sustainable than its real counterpart) – turns out to be a very good idea indeed. At least in terms of energy.
Made of a thin layer of polyethylene coated with propylene glycol, fake ice doesn’t seem like an intrinsically environmental choice. Plastic is verboten in most environmental lexicons. The other component, propylene glycol, is essentially a friendlier version of ethylene glycol; both are used as antifreeze, among other things. Like its ethylene cousin, propylene increases the amount of acid in the body’s bloodstream. Unlike ethylene, whose metabolic conversion (in living tissue) produces highly toxic oxalic acid, propylene converts to simple lactic acid, the ingredient responsible for athletes’ muscle cramps.
Proplyene can cause mild eye and skin irritation and upper respiratory irritation when breathed as a mist. It is not a carcinogen, however, and shows no evidence of being genotoxic (it won’t turn your future "little monsters" into real monstrosities). In fact, its only danger is its sweet flavor, which – when soaked into some little kid’s mitten – turns into a pseudo-lollipop. Even then, its toxicity is so low that rats fed a four-percent solution in water showed no effects.
On the downside, fake ice is much more expensive than real ice when first installed, and tends to exert a certain amount of "drag" on skate blades. Defraying the high initial cost, in environmental terms at least, is the fact that fake ice is 100-percent recyclable. The drag is an inevitable consequence of the polymer (plastic creates friction), and can be irritating to hockey jocks and speed skaters alike.
Maintenance costs are equal to, or lower than, traditional ice rinks, where Zamboni machines spewing noxious fumes must resurface the ice several times daily (usually in an indoor environment that doesn’t allow the fumes to dissipate). With fake ice, all that is needed is an occasional application of glycol, typically sprayed as a mist. Keeping real ice icy and smooth costs as much, over a four-day period, as heating and lighting a family home for a year, and produces as many carbon dioxide emissions.
Manufacturers claim that the fake ice is suitable not only for ice skates, but for shoes and roller skates. Lacking the slippery quality of real ice, fake ice floors can do double-duty as basketball courts, roller rinks or even ballrooms. Even so, I can’t imagine my resident hockey players switching their jerseys and pads for a tux.
Disclosure: I don’t own stock in any artificial ice manufacturer.