Cleanup missions in Arctic to feature 5,000 volunteers
MURMANSK, June 28. /TASS/. About 5,000 volunteers will participate in more than 30 missions to clean the Arctic's all nine regions, Clean Arctic's COB Ruslan Gubaidullin told TASS.
"We have big plans. This year, our objective is to attract up to 5,000 people to our missions," he said. "In the first year, we attracted 2,200 volunteers, in the second - slightly more than 3,000, and now - 5,000. This is the plan we can afford as everything is based on available financing."
The expenses per one volunteer, including a return ticket, make at least 150,000 rubles ($1,761), he said.
Earlier, on June 23, during the polar day period, volunteers, participating in an Arctic forum in Murmansk, were involved in a night-time cleanup mission near Cape Abram-Mys on the Kola Peninsula's western coast. "The area is about 1.5-2 hectares," he said commenting on the mission's area size.
The third cleanup summer in the Arctic began in Karelia on May 21, on the Polar Explorer Day. "This year we will have more than 30 expeditions," the movement's representative said. Normally a season begins in mid-May and continues to October. "We need to manage within these five months, to manage before snow and frosts begin."
Several volunteers will go to Spitsbergen to take part in similar ecology missions there, he added.
The project's objective is to clean the Arctic territories from the waste, remaining there since the Soviet times' intensive Arctic exploration. The missions feature volunteers from Russia and abroad. Over two seasons, Clean Arctic's volunteers cleaned 110 hectares of the Arctic land and removed more than 5,000 tons of waste.
About forum
The Arctic forum in Murmansk was organized as an event of Russia's chairing the Arctic Council in 2021 - 2023. The events' organizer was the Roscongress Foundation. The forum was organized by the Ministry for Development of the Far East and Arctic with the support from the Clean Arctic movement.
Photo by Denis Kozhevnikov/TASS
