Volunteers collect more than 11 tonnes of waste on mountain in Polar Urals

Photo by Denis Kozhevnikov/TASS MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/. Clean Arctic’s volunteers collected more than eleven tonnes of waste at an abandoned communication station on a 1,100-meter-high mountain in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, Clean Arctic’s press service said. "Clean Arctic’s volunteers have returned to Salekhard from a four-day mission to the Lekvozh Mountain in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, where they were collecting waste at an abandoned communication station, which is more than 1,100 meters above sea level," the press service said. "During the expedition, ten volunteers in harsh climate conditions managed to collect and prepare for further processing more than eleven tonnes of waste: ten tonnes of metal and 1.4 tonnes of household waste - plastics, glass." Every day, the volunteers had to climb about eight kilometers up the mountain. The return trip usually took about an hour and a half. The expedition featured volunteers from Moscow, Voronezh, Khadyzhensk, Naberezhnye Chelny and Kemerovo. During the current summer season, Clean Arctic volunteers will additionally work at the former Marre-Sale polar station and in the former Polar settlement on the Yamal Peninsula, where they will collect and prepare for transportation the waste, remaining there from the Soviet times. "The volunteers have managed to return to the Bely and the Vilkitsky islands their initial looks," the press service quoted Yamal’s Governor Dmitry Artyukhov as saying. "This year in the region we mark the Year of Ecology, and we have launched a big number of various projects, and we can see how the local residents care, they want to participate in the ecology events, they have presented about 700 initiatives of the kind, and work on the best initiatives is underway." Clean Arctic is a large-scale project to clean the Arctic territory from the waste, accumulated since the Soviet times. 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 are the project’s authors. Clean Arctic has developed into a platform, which unites public and volunteer organizations, scientists, officials and businesses. The project’s partners are Norilsk Nickel, PhosAgro, and RZD. In 2021, Clean Arctic’s volunteers collected and prepared for further processing more than 1,500 tonnes of waste. The second season started in the Murmansk Region on May 28. During the summer season in 2022, volunteers will participate in more than 30 expeditions to all the Arctic regions. Read more