of 36% was criticized by Greenpeace Russia in December 2019 when official documents from the government of Moscow (and later the federal government) were released, detailing that waste incineration would be deemed as a form of recycling. Impacts of waste mismanagement Landfills In 2019, almost 70 million tonnes of municipal solid waste was produced in Russia, with over 90% of this amount being deposited in landfills. The Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage stated in 2019 that landfills in Russia occupied an area roughly equivalent to the size of the Netherlands. Outcome no.1 of the National Project on Ecology is “Clean Country”, which represents the objective of removing all 191 of the illegal landfills identified by the Russian government in 2018. Across several oblasts of Russia, leachates from landfills have been observed to contaminate groundwater with hazardous constituents such as heavy metals and toxic chemicals, reducing biodiversity and soil fertility. The solid waste disposal sector represents the second-largest source of methane gas emissions in Russia, predominately through the form of landfill gas. In addition to other waste-to-energy technologies, landfill gas recovery is not commonly exhibited across Russia. Mass protests erupted in Russia in 2018 when over 200 schoolchildren were hospitalized from inhaling poisonous gas emissions originating from a landfill in the town of Volokolamsk in Moscow Oblast. The protests proliferated across other localities in 2019, including Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, Arkhangelsk, and Nizhny Novgorod, where protesters demanded the closure of waste incineration plants, halting of landfill construction and for general reform within the Russian solid waste sector. Nuclear waste In the concluding months of World War II, the Soviet government designated the islands of Novaya Zemlya as testing grounds for the development and trial of nuclear weapons. Between September 21, 1955, and October 24, 1990, over 130 nuclear detonations were tested on the archipelago, including the detonation of Tsar Bomba in October 1961 above Severny Island. However, the Soviet government began exclusively conducting underground nuclear tests following Andrei Gromyko's signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on August 5, 1963, in Moscow. As a result, the adjacent Barents and Kara Seas were frequently polluted throughout this period with nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel, contributing to a radioactive environment that has threatened the Russian and Norwegian fishing industries (which rely heavily upon the Barents Sea) and livelihoods of the surrounding indigenous population. The Kara Sea has been reported to