TASS, July 26. A group of twelve volunteers, representing the Clean Arctic project and the Green Arctic organization, will clean up Cape Marre-Sale in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region. The expedition will continue for two weeks. The volunteers will collect more than 2,000 fuel barrels, Clean Arctic’s press service said on Monday.
"Twelve volunteers from across Russia have left for Cape Marre-Sale in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, where they will collect thousands of rusty barrels near one of the oldest polar stations," the press service said. "The joint expedition of the Green Arctic non-governmental organization and of the Clean Arctic federal project to Cape Marre-Sale will continue for two weeks. Over that time, the team will collect, have pressed and prepared for transportation more than 2,000 200-liter fuel barrels."
The group’s leader is Pavel Orekhov, a landscape scientist at the Russian center for the Arctic development. According to him, since 1979 on Cape Marre-Sale has been working a geo-cryology site, where experts continue ongoing studies of cryolithozone’s background temperature changes in natural conditions. "Thus, the volunteers, leaving for the cape, will have a great opportunity to see why such expeditions use the labor of volunteers and not heavy vehicles," he said.
Scientists also identify the contamination scale and morphology, and assess the waste’s impact on the environment, Clean Arctic’s COB Ruslan Gubaidullin added.
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, RZD, and PhosAgro.