TASS, February 24. Volunteers and representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry in 2021 removed from Yakutia’s coastline in the Arctic districts more than 300 tonnes of scrap metal and 250 tonnes of wood, as a part of the Clean Arctic federal ecology project, the regional government reported on its website on Wednesday.
"The volunteers, local residents and the Defense Ministry collected and removed about 300 tonnes of scrap metal and 250 tonnes of wood and plastic from the Bulunsky District in 2021," the government said. "In the current year, the region will continue to clean the Arctic territories and to attract industrial companies to ecology projects in Yakutia’s Arctic."
The Arctic Vtormet, the Defense Ministry’s authorized operator, will continue to clean from scrap metal the Tiksi settlement and its surroundings. The company will demolish and transport the waste - the plan is to transport from Tiksi 40,000 tonnes of waste to 2023, the government said.
Another 20,000 tonnes of waste will be transported from three settlements in the Ust-Yansky District - Deputatsky, Ust-Kuiga, and Severny. The Ust-Yansky District and the Russian Arctic Zone’s resident, VSP-Resurs, have entered an agreement to process scrap metal.
According to Yakutia’s government, the region has identified preliminary 437 sites of gained non-ferrous and ferrous scrap metal, 84% of which are in the region’s Arctic territories.
In 2021, under the Clean Arctic project more than 1,500 tonnes of waste were collected in Russia’s Arctic regions. Those were barrels, tires, plastics, wood. Cleanup missions and expeditions were organized in the Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutia, Yamalo-Nenets, Nenets, Komi and Karelia regions.