The combined environmental unit of the Eastern Military District plans to collect and remove some 215 tonnes of scrap metal from Wrangel Island in the Arctic throughout 2023, the Eastern Military District reports.

“Servicemen of the combined environmental unit of the Eastern Military District have started preparations for cleaning up the scrap metal from an area on Wrangel Island. The unit has been instructed to collect, compress, prepare and take away, on board third-party ships, about 215 tonnes of scrap metal, which adds up to22 twenty-pound containers,” the report says.

The combined environmental unit tasked with collecting scrap metal on Wrangel Island has the strength of 40. They will operate modern truck cranes, Ural-based scrap trucks, KamAZ-based dump trucks, and tracked transporters. In total, about 18 units of equipment will be used.

Wrangel Island is located in the Arctic Ocean between the East Siberian and Chukchi seas. It is part of the nature reserve of the same name and is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. All told, the EMD military collected and removed about 2,200 tonnes of non-ferrous and ferrous scrap from Wrangel Island in the course of work in the Arctic zone from 2015 through the summer of 2022. Over 215 tonnes of scrap was also collected during the 2022 season.