MURMANSK, July 14. /TASS/. Members of the Murmansk Region’s Volunteer Center and participants in the Clean Arctic project jointly with biologists of the Lomonosov Moscow State University will collect and study waste at the Barents Sea coastline. They want to find best ways to process plastics waste, Clean Arctic’s press service said.
"The expedition results will be used in a big survey to find a universal approach to ecology-friendly processing of plastic waste typical for sea coastlines," the press service said.
The waste will be collected in the Murmansk Region’s Dalniye Zelentsy District. During the mission rescuers will dive to sample sediments which will be tested to see plastic contamination rates. "We believe that up to 15% of the plastics, found on the Barents Sea coast, may be processed," the press service said.
According to the press service, volunteers have found on the Barents Sea coastline waste from across the globe. Yoghurt packages from Scandinavia, juice and milk bottles from South Korea and India. New approaches to waste processing are very important for the Northern territories, Clean Arctic’s federal headquarters said. "Clean Arctic supports such initiatives. It is not about just to collect waste. What matters is to process it, to find new approaches to processing," the press service quoted Andrey Nagivin of Clean Arctic’s federal headquarters as saying. "If with our participation a new approach is found, it would be another step towards the clean Arctic, or rather to the clean planet."
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.