MOSCOW, October 30. /TASS/. Over five seasons, the Clean Arctic project's volunteers collected 22,045 tons of waste and cleaned 1,101 hectares of land, the Federation Council's First Deputy Speaker Vladimir Yakushev said at a meeting of the Council for the Development of the Far East, Arctic and Antarctic.

"Presently, almost 10,000 volunteers are participating in the [Clean Arctic] project, or, to be precise, 9,923 people," he said. "Over five seasons, the volunteers have collected 22.45 tons of waste and cleaned 1,101 hectares of land. The amount of work is impressive."

The Clean Arctic project, he continued, plays an important role in the patriotic education of young people. He noted that in the year of the Victory's 80th anniversary and in the year of Defender of the Fatherland, the volunteers have been engaged not only in Arctic cleanup, but also in landscaping around mass graves in locations of the Great Patriotic War battlefields.

"Main missions were in the Murmansk and Karelia Regions. The volunteers have also participated in the beautification of the memorial complex in honor of World War II last battle on the Kurils' Shumshu Island. They have landscaped the area where the Kuril landing took place in August 1945," he added.

According to the Clean Arctic project's press service, in 2025 work began earlier than usual - in March. The first transportation of 60 tons of scrap metal along a winter snow road was in Yakutsk. Large-scale cleanup missions have been in the Arkhangelsk, Nenets, Komi, and Chukotka Regions. The project's volunteers have worked in Anapa and Sevastopol to clean the Black Sea coast from fuel oil.

"It was exactly in the Murmansk Region, that five years ago we launched the Clean Arctic movement. Therefore, we are particularly pleased to see to what extent it has grown," the press service quoted Evgenia Chibis, head of the Murmansk Region's United Volunteer Center. "The Murmansk Region has developed a unique cooperation with Clean Arctic, and our projects often add to each other. For example, this year, under the project From Spring to Ocean, our volunteers have restored ten monuments of the Great Patriotic War on the Sredny and the Rybachy peninsulas, and parallel to that our volunteers were working at other locations. Thus, in the year of the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory, we have managed to landscape the maximum number of memorials in the region."

About the project

The Clean Arctic federal project began in 2021 and has scaled up significantly featuring volunteers from across the country. TASS is the project's general information partner.