PETROZAVODSK, October 12. /TASS/. The Clean Arctic project’s volunteers collected 50 tonnes of waste in Karelia. They cleaned an eco-trail leading to the White Sea Petroglyphs and removed a landfill in the Belomorsky District, the project’s press service said on Monday.
"The Clean Arctic’s volunteers have collected 50 tonnes of waste in Karelia," the release reads. "The team worked at two locations: near the White Sea Petroglyphs and near the Letnerechensky village."
The team featured volunteers from Yakutia, the Ryazan Region. The local residents participated in a cleanup mission near the Letnerechensky village, where they removed about 10 tonnes of waste. In addition to that, the Clean Arctic team cleaned the eco-trail leading to the White Sea Petroglyphs archeology complex, which in 2021 was put on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The volunteers removed brushwood from the trail.
"The North only at first glance seems severe. In fact, it’s very fragile nature requires special care," the press service quoted Karelia’s Governor Artur Parfenchikov, who thanked the volunteers for their effort.
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 Sergei Ivanov, the nature watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, volunteer and public organizations, scientific community and by the Arctic regions’ governors.