Clean Arctic plans several dozen expeditions for upcoming season
MOSCOW, April 27. /TASS/. The Clean Arctic project plans several dozen youth expeditions between May 18 and September 30, the project's press service reported on Wednesday.
"I wish our plans did not remain just plans, I hope they will be implemented in the form of promising projects, which will feature Russian senators representing the Arctic regions," the press service quoted Elena Zlenko, the Federation Council's deputy head of the agriculture, food policy and environment committee, as saying. "I believe that close cooperation with volunteers is an ideal work model to implement a successful project in every region. Senators will share with the young people their parliamentary experience, and in a sense they will teach the youth, share the knowledge, will talk to volunteers in the evening, after a hard day's work."
The Clean Arctic project plans several dozen expeditions between May 18 and September 30, including to Cape Kamenny, to Polyarny, Pevek, Tiksi, Stary Varandey and the Brevennik Island. The chain of expeditions will begin from Belomorsk: volunteers will clean up the White Sea petroglyphs and will proceed towards the former sawmill and seaport, will get to the Voitsky Padun waterfall, will clean landfills in Komi, banks of the Pechora River in Naryan-Mar. Another cleanup mission will go to the Marresalya polar station on the Yamal Peninsula's western coast. Volunteers will get there by helicopter.
"Every expedition will continue for about one week, and we expect that in 2023 the number of volunteers, and consequently the amount of collected waste, will double. We will expand significantly the educational work on how to preserve the fragile Northern nature and to keep the ecological balance in the Arctic. For each mission, we have set dates and the number of volunteers from regional, federal headquarters and from corporate partners. Also, for every mission, we have indicated what kind of waste will be collected at every location. We have listed six groups - scrap metal, construction debris, solid municipal waste, wood, tires and abandoned equipment," the Clean Arctic Project Office's leader Andrey Nagibin added.
About project
Clean Arctic is a large-scale project to clean the Arctic territory from the waste, accumulated since the Soviet times. The project's initiators 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. Over the project's two years, more than 5,000 volunteers have prepared for further processing more than 50,000 tons of waste at various locations: they have cleaned almost 235 hectares. The project features volunteers from Russia's all regions, as well as from a few countries: Benin, Egypt, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Brazil, and Bolivia.
Photo by Sergei Fadeichev/TASS
