Clean Arctic volunteers leave for mission on Novaya Zemlya

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/. Volunteers of Russia’s Clean Arctic project will leave Arkhangelsk on Tuesday for the Yuzhny Island (the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago’s southern island) to remove about 300 tonnes of waste from there, the project’s press center said on Tuesday. "The big national project attracts new volunteers," the press center said. "This time, those are the Clean North - Clean Country movement and the Together We Are Stronger center. Five volunteers, who care about the ecology in the Arctic, are leaving for an expedition to the Yuzhny Island onboard the Mikhail Somov research vessel." They will collect heavy waste, scattered across the island, and prepare it for further transportation, which will involve a helicopter and the Mikhail Somov vessel. The volunteers are expected to collect about 250-300 tonnes of waste within two months. The expedition will feature the Malye Karmakuly polar weather station — the first in Russia and the second in the world station to make regular weather observations. Besides, Malye Karmakuly is the oldest settlement on Novaya Zemlya. It was founded in 1877. The volunteers come from across the country. Some of them are ocean researchers, and a few are writers. The expedition’s all members are experienced in work in harsh conditions. The Clean Arctic project’s authors are Captain of the 50 Let Pobedy nuclear-powered Arctic class icebreaker Dmitry Lobusov and Gennady Antokhin, Captain on FESCO’s ships from 1982 to 2012. In early June, Captain Lobuzov suggested organizing a "big Arctic cleanup," hoping the joint effort would clean the Arctic territories from accumulated scrap metal and fuel. The program, presented at the Public Chamber on July 5, has been widely supported, including by the president’s ecology envoy Sergei Ivanov, the nature watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, volunteer and public organizations, scientific community and by the Arctic regions’ governors. Photo by Denis Kozhevnikov/TASS Read more