Clean Arctic volunteers collect more than 150 tonnes of waste in Komi

TASS, October 4. The Clean Arctic expedition’s volunteers collected and transported about 150 tonnes of waste from the Komi Region, the project’s press service said on Saturday. "The Clean Arctic’s team of volunteers has shared first results of the work in Komi," the release reads. "They have removed already about 150 tonnes of waste - by more than 25 trucks. As you know, the volunteers clean the territory near the Arctic Circle monument and renovate it - they remove the old paint and make a fresh coat, and apply metal layer to the basement. The volunteers also work at the local motorcycle track, where they remove the waste and clean the riverbed." Near Usinsk, local residents, representatives of public organizations and the local automotive club have joined the mission. The project has been supported by Komi’s Governor Vladimir Uiba. "It [Clean Arctic] is a very important ecology project," he said. "I would like to thank everyone, who has joined it and who has made an input in cleaning the Arctic territory from the accumulated damage." The first volunteer shift in Komi continues to October 4. At the same time, under the Clean Arctic project, local residents, like in other regions, will continue the cleanup. Another team of five people has been working on the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago, where on the Yuzhny Island they have collected more than 50 tonnes of scrap metal over one month. A few more expeditions are planned for October - to Karelia and Murmansk regions. The Clean Arctic volunteers have completed tasks in the Krasnoyarsk, Yamalo-Nenets, Arkhangelsk regions, in Chukotka and Yakutia. 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 Sergey Ivanov, the nature watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, volunteer and public organizations, scientific community and by the Arctic regions’ governors. Photo by Denis Kozhevnikov/TASS Read more