History:
The founder, Katie, decided, “why not me?” She had been advocating for the cold kind of ice at a local community level but realized this big problem requires a big solution. During the heat waves of 2021 and 2022 that claimed thousands of lives across the Pacific Northwest, she envisioned dump trucks full with flake ice where people would throw cold ice at each other and enjoy cooling down in the summer, similar to the Tomatina Festival but cold ice instead of tomatoes. That’s just where the idea started, a fun thought. That is not the goal of the project but is what inspired this model. So in 2026, Katie decided to found The Good Ice to address the immediate health crises from extreme heat in the changing climate and the neglect of the unhoused community’s need to keep their medicines from spoiling. Heat is the number one cause of weather related death. Although the official death toll is not in the tens of thousands, heart attacks and strokes related to heat waves are not tracked and are in the tens of thousands. It’s not tornadoes, fires, blizzards, floods, lightning, hurricanes, or volcanoes; it’s heat exposure. Katie wondered for years why cooling early wasn’t already the approach and why wasn’t anybody addressing the problem in an urgent way instead of solutions that take decades. Trees for cover in heat islands take years to provide relief and housing reform in Seattle could take forty years. This spring season is already warm and there is the incipient super El Niño percolating in the Pacific, this is a recipe for a sizzling summer.
“Why not me,” became, “it must be me and I must hurry.”
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