It was my dad’s friend John who first pointed out to me in the 1980s that café staff get cross if you ask for your orange juice with no ice in. They have to give you a whole glass of juice and this costs them more than a shovel full of frozen water topped up with a splash of what you really want to drink.

Last year in Tokyo I asked for a medium sized, freshly squeezed orange juice, without the ice, in an Italian café. The orange juice took up about 25% of the medium sized cup.

The cups are big, but you’re not getting what you think you’ve ordered. Think on that when you next pay for a regular lemonade.

Making ice raises the energy bills. Why do cafes, bars and restaurants do it? Because big chunks of frozen water don’t cost anywhere near as much as fresh juice, milk shake or gin and tonic. 10cl of orange juice can be made to look like 40cl if you fill the cup to the top with ice cubes.

Maybe we’ll get charged more for asking for our drinks without ice, but that’s OK. We’ll actually be getting what we’re paying for, not 25% of what we think we’re paying for.

Try this at home
Take your last ever tray of ice cubes from the freezer. Fill a glass to the top they way they do in cafés; pour some juice over the ice right up to the top. Then pour the lot through a strainer into another glass and see how much juice was really in there. Think on.

Use your observation skills
When you’re watching television or reading a magazine, spot how often ice is used in advertisements to symbolise refreshment. Email us with your ice cube sightings and we’ll put them here.

And the arguments against?

I've hit some raw nerves making this suggestion. Here's a response from Texas  which also made me think:

" I was raised in the South where having ice was a necessity. I have many memories of cooling myself down with big glasses of ice water, sweetened ice tea and sour iced lemon-aid. It is true that if you drank it too fast, it could make your stomach cramp for a moment, but it was ALWAYS refreshing. Ice was a God of sorts to kids in the hot Texas town I grew up in. Sometimes we would place a bowl of ice in front of an oscillating fan so it could blow artic air over our sunburned skin. If we could, we would take a piece of ice each to lick and then let the cold water run down our arms or drip on the backs of our necks. And as to kids from the South, who will ever forget the ecstasy of homemade ice cream that you would crank for hours and then get to enjoy on the back porch? For some folks ice means a lot more than you can imagine.

Do you really want folks to join you in being "anti-ice activists"? I am a bit saddened at this level of environmental fervor over ice of all things! One of the reasons I feel this way is because I am a small time environmental activist, surrounded by many conservative folks who justify their apathy and stubborn resistance by focusing on the absurd acts of some extreme groups. Are you not worried that if you are not careful in what you suggest, that it could backfire and make your efforts look silly and possibly do damage to the efforts of other groups? Tone, especially in persuasive writing as you know is very important. If your intent is to whip up and energize folks who are already "anti-ice" and encourage them to be more confrontational, then I think you have been successful with your new web pages. BUT if you want to start a dialogue with folks who enjoy ice, then you really need to change the tone of your pages. I think that most ice lovers would feel insulted and not be the least bit interested in hearing your opinion. Most I imagine would just roll their eyes and label you foolish and trivial."

If this website looks like the absurd act of an extremist then I do apologise. That is not its intention.
Here's another one from the US.

"Once again might you look at the things your time and effort might have done. You know you could have blindly defended child welfare with your tons of verbiage. You could have written senators, you could have been out feeding the homeless. Luskily for ice cube haters, you chose this worthy topic."

I chose this one because I don't think it's been addressed. As I was saying, it's not instead of other ideas to change our environment for the better, it's another one to add to the list.

Here's another view from Texas:

"I always wonder what would happen if I went up to the bartender, ordered a rum and coke, and told him to hold the ice. Never had the balls to try it, though."

One from Washington DC:

"I had never thought about the wasted energy component. Thanks for encouraging me to think about it. I'll chalk this up to the "every little bit helps" category... Oh, and in the winter, we keep all "cold" beverages out on the porch. Nature's fridge! (ours is really small, so every bit of space saved helps). Every now and then something explodes.