MOSCOW, June 19. /TASS/. The Clean Arctic public environmental project plans to adopt within the current year a standard for waste collection and removal from hard-to-reach locations in the Far North, the project's leader Andrey Nagibin told TASS.
Using a single standard for cleanup in the Arctic is extremely important since work there requires special approaches not to harm nature. The recommendations will comply with the president's instructions of 2022, which he gave following the Ecosystem – Protected Area forum in Kamchatka. These include analyzing problems that arise during the collection, accumulation, sorting and removal of waste, proposals for amendments to legislation, as well funding these activities.
"The recommendations have been prepared, work on them continues. This year, we will adopt them. It is necessary to involve relevant institutions. We will have a standard. <...> This is our know-how. We want to put it into operation this year," he said.
The project leader highlighted the importance of manual labor and involvement of trained eco-volunteers to avoid using heavy machinery, traces from which may remain there for decades.
The Clean Arctic project began in 2021. Over this time, 7,700 people have collected 19,800 tons of waste, and cleaned more than 700 hectares of Arctic land.