Ukraine's ghost town of Prypyat, just 5 km from the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, was full of people in protective gear on Thursday in a mass clean up of rubbish from the site.
Equipped with plastic bags and clad in masks and jumpsuits, dozens of volunteers and tour guides wandered around abandoned buildings and combed through the surrounding woods for rubbish left by other visitors.
Anna Kirianova, a guide with a company that organises tours of Chernobyl, said she participated in the cleaning operations every year as she wants to preserve the atmosphere of the once-lively small town.
Plastic and glass bottles, napkins, protective gloves and masks, and even condom covers and a net used for fishing were among the items left behind by irresponsible tourists, Kirianova told Reuters.
However, items like Soviet-style toys and glass milk bottles were left untouched to maintain the creepy atmosphere of town, which was quickly evacuated in the wake of the disaster.
The director of the tour company, Yaroslav Yemelianenko, said they had previously tried to install rubbish bins to reduce littering, but had been unable to get rubbish taken away from the site.
On April 26, 1986, a botched test at the Soviet nuclear plant at Chernobyl sent clouds of smouldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, forcing over 50,000 people to evacuate and poisoning unknown numbers.
In 2016, a structure called the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement, which resembles a vast aircraft hangar, was built to prevent deadly radiation spewing from the nuclear disaster site.
The company was taking part in a global clean-up challenge that has gone viral worldwide, with social media posts of rubbish tagged with #trashtag.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 News in English, Reuters