YAKUTSK, May 19. /TASS/. The Clean Arctic federal project will organize in the current year three cleanup missions in Yakutia’s Arctic districts - Bulunsky, Verkhoyansky and Ust-Yansky, the regional ministry for development of the Arctic and the North’s peoples’ affairs told TASS on Thursday.
"Clean Arctic’s events will be organized in Yakutia’s three districts," the ministry’s press service said. "For 2022, Clean Arctic’s project office has suggested three locations in the region - Tiksi, Ust-Kuiga and Batagai."
The districts’ authorities will organize the cleaning shortly, the ministry added.
Clean Arctic is a large-scale project to clean the Arctic territories from the waste, remaining there since the Soviet times. The project started in late July, 2021, after the Russian Public Chamber discussed an initiative of 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. Clean Arctic has united public, volunteer organizations, scientists, regional officials and businesses. In 2021, thousands volunteers participated in cleanup missions and expeditions. They removed heaps of scrap metal, dismantled outdated buildings and even lifted sunken vessels.
Works have been organized on the Taimyr, in Tiksi, on the Vilkitsky Island and the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago, in Komi, near the White Sea petroglyphs in Karelia, near the Novodvinskya Castle in the Arkhangelsk Region, and in Teriberka in the Murmansk Region. In 2021, more than 1,500 tonnes of waste have been collected and prepared for further processing. More than 3,000 people have filed applications for participation in the project. They have made a big reserve of volunteers.