TASS, July 6. An ecology expedition to the Lekvozh Mountain in the Polar Urals began in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region. Clean Arctic volunteers will participate in a cleanup mission there for the first time, the organization’s press service told TASS on Wednesday.
"Clean Arctic’s volunteers have cleaned nature reserves, islands and coasts of the White Sea, but they have never worked in the mountains," the press service quoted the organization’s COB Ruslan Gubaidullin as saying. "I would like to stress that this federal project is not only about removing the waste, accumulated since the Soviet times, it is also processing of that waste."
"The transportation of scrap metal and large waste, which will be collected in the mountains, will require big efforts and will take a certain time," he added.
The Arctic team unites volunteers from Moscow, Voronezh, Naberezhnye Chelny, Kemerovo and other Russian cities. A bus will take them to the Lekvozh Mountain’s foot, and then they will take a ferry and ATVs. Every day, the volunteers will have to get to 1,000 meters above the sea to clean the territory of a former communication station from industrial and household waste.
In 2021, Clean Arctic’s missions on the Yamal Peninsula were at two locations on the Kara Sea. In the Kharasavey settlement, volunteers collected 43 cubic meters of combustible waste and more than 21 tonnes of scrap metal. On the Vilkitsky Island, over two weeks, volunteers prepared 3,000 fuel barrels for transportation.
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, PhosAgro, and RZD.