MURMANSK, August 3. /TASS/. Volunteers of the Clean Arctic project from Tambov, Nizhny Tagil, Kirov, Moscow and Volgograd will clean up town Nickel in the Murmansk Region, the project’s press service told TASS on Wednesday.
"The volunteers of Clean Arctic and of the World Tree Camp campus, organized with support of the project’s general partner - Norilsk Nickel MMC - have come to the Murmansk Region’s Nickel town to collect and prepare for further transportation iron cables and wires, rusty pipes, tires, large fragments of metal and plastic waste, as well as to make tidy and comfortable the local leisure areas," the press service said.
For almost two weeks, the expedition groups will be cleaning up a few locations at a time - a part of the Kolosyoki River near the Sobachka Hill, Sopka 555 tourist route, the area of the Kola Superdeep Borehole, as well as a children’s playground and the Rodnik park. Dozens volunteers from across Russia will work at the locations.
The mission in Nickel will also feature volunteers of the World Tree Camp, organized with the support of Nornickel. The team step by step supports implementation of the region’s program to clean and make comfortable public areas in the region. Jointly with Clean Arctic volunteers they have been work on a mission to make the space free from waste and landfills.
"What can the state and businesses do to solve urgent environmental problems? Correct - to offer and adopt measures, where dozens giant enterprises not just minimize the negative impact on the environment, but cut the contamination in residential areas, similar to what we can see in the case with Nornickel, which for many years has been improving ecological safety of its assets," the project’s press service quoted Clean Arctic’s member of the federal headquarters Andrey Nagibin as saying. "The fact that World Tree Camp’s volunteers have focused on the problem to collect and process household waste in Nickel is very important and this initiative is in line with Clean Arctic’s objectives, when we assist the Northern regions in restoring the nature and ecology."
About project
The federal project has organized its biggest missions in the Murmansk Region. The second season has started in the Murmansk Region. Missions have taken place in Kandalaksha, Kirovsk, Dalniye Zelentsy, featuring local volunteers, Clean Arctic volunteers and biologists of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. Over five days, the team collected and sorted more than 2.5 tonnes of waste, and the scientists conducted studies to assess the plastics contamination of the Barents Sea seaboard.
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, Rosatom, PhosAgro, and RZD.