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Nornickel’s volunteers participate in 300 ecology missions in 2018

According to the National Reserves Ecology Center’s deputy director, volunteers promote natural reserves and their tourism potential

SOCHI, October 22. /TASS/. About 4,000 eco-volunteers of the Norilsk Nickel Company (Nornickel) participated in around 300 ecology missions in 2018, Director of the company’s Public Relations Department Andrei Kirpichnikov told TASS on Friday on sidelines of an international ecology forum in Sochi.

"The ecology volunteer movement is expanding, and during the current year the company’s more than 4,500 employees have participated in it," he told the Sustainable Tourism: Global Challenge and Discovering Russia conference. "They have participated in about 300 ecology missions, which is an absolute record over the three years the company’s volunteer movement exists."

In addition to the programs to upgrade production cycles, to close the nickel plant in Norilsk and to launch the project to capture sulfur emissions, the company develops the volunteer movement at natural reserves, in educational ecology projects, invests in assets of natural reserves in territories of its presence, develops cooperation with foreign ecology organizations, he added.

Nornickel’s Head of the Corporate Volunteer Department Elena Kryuchkova told TASS the volunteers may become a driver for ecology tourism’s development.

"Our key volunteer eco-marathon Up and Rolling is focused on it," she said. "We have shared practices of the eco-marathon, which are bringing results in ecology tourism’s development."

The company’s ecology volunteers have built an ecology lecture hall in the city park, renovated a spring and a stone garden in formerly littered areas, and resumed a dog shelter, she added.

According to the National Reserves Ecology Center’s Deputy Director Elena Knizhnikova, volunteers promote natural reserves and their tourism potential.

"It is very important," she told TASS. "We, on our side, help them as experts, offer to volunteers the directions, including resource and energy effectiveness, and own ecology projects."

The conference in Sochi discussed development of ecology tourism in Russia. All experts pointed to the ecology volunteers’ leading role in development of this direction.