About 40,000 barrels of fuel and lubricants have accumulated on Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of Eurasia. In addition to the old barrels, the volunteers of the Clean Arctic project found a large amount of other waste material. The area of pollution is about 40 hectares.
"There is a lot of scrap metal. Remnants of machinery, equipment, life support structures: towers, stairs, platforms. In Soviet times, many fuel tanks were installed on the Cape. These structures also require recycling," says Vitaly Kalinichev, head of the Clean Arctic expedition to Cape Chelyuskin.
The shipment of the collected waste is scheduled for early November.
The volunteers traveled to Cape Chelyuskin for 31 days on the Mikhail Somov scientific expedition vessel. The Arctic expedition will last two months. This is the third and longest expedition of Mikhail Somov this year. It is planned that the ship will return to Arkhangelsk in November.
The expedition to Cape Chelyuskin is the most difficult in the history of the Clean Arctic project, it is carried out with the support of the Rosatom State Corporation. It is assumed that trips to the peninsula will become regular. They are scheduled for the summer season next year.
The Clean Arctic Public Environmental Project has been cleaning up northern territories of Russia since 2021. Volunteers deal with the legacy that remained from the USSR. Waste disposal is a complex technological work, taking into account the natural features of the Arctic region. In total, over three seasons, the volunteers of the project collected 12,000 tons of waste, according to pravdasevera.ru.
Alex Shishlo, Editor in Chief of the European Bureau, Rough&Polished
