A large team of volunteers from Norilsk Nickel and Clean Arctic began to clean up Soviet-era waste from abandoned construction sites in Dudinka and on the banks of the Shchuchya River near Norilsk.
The team included volunteers from a number of Russian cities - Norilsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Usinsk, as well as from Tajikistan.
Within several days of cleanup in Dudinka, volunteers collected over 300 tons of waste. Cutting metal into smaller fractions was carried out by specialists on-site. Now the entire collected waste is ready for transportation: with the onset of the season, it will be transported for disposal along the winter road.
Volunteers also collected fragments of side structures and decommissioned equipment on the banks of the Shchuchye River.
Andrey Grachev, Vice President for Federal and Regional Programs at Norilsk Nickel, stressed: “Last year, our company supported the Clean Arctic initiative - this is how a large environmental alliance was born. Nornickel is implementing a large-scale Clean Norilsk program worth 40 billion rubles worth of investment in the region. Our plans include cleaning up about 2 million tons of waste and 600,000 tons of scrap metal both at industrial and municipal facilities. And 40% of all this work has already been completed."
In past seasons, volunteers dismantled the abandoned buildings of the local fish factory, cleaned the banks of the Pshenichny, Aromatny and Northern Levinsky streams.
Theodor Lisovoy, Editor in Chief of the European bureau, Rough&Polished
