Minzilya Syutkina: "If there is a will, opportunities will follow"

29 march 2024

Our March issue of the About People and Good Deeds column features an interview with Minzilya Syutkina, General Director of the Yugra Chamber of Professional Accountants and Auditors and coordinator of the Clean Games project in Nizhnevartovsk, discussing how it happened that the theme of environmental conservation entered her life, what inspired her to launch the project and how one should go about organizing such events.

You are the General Director of the Yugra Chamber of Professional Accountants and Auditors. Would you please share with us how long you have been involved with auditing and consulting?
I am indeed an auditor, a lawyer, and a tax consultant, and I have been working in this field for more than 20 years. The Yugra Chamber of Professional Accountants and Auditors is a non-profit partnership uniting our region’s representatives of this profession seeking to improve their professional skills and to set up platforms for professional exchanges.

Your core occupation is not directly linked to environmental conservation. How and why did this theme enter your life?
True, all my work is mostly associated with finances and is really not directly related to environmental conservation. But this theme had been on my mind for quite a long time. I just saw how littered up our public places can sometimes get, especially in cities, in parks, where parents take their children and even newborns for a walk or a stroll. Especially when you can see spent batteries scattered around places like that poisoning at least 50 square meters of space around them with their heavy metals and other harmful compounds. This would make one wonder. I felt it was important to start doing something to make my city cleaner. On the other hand, this is one of those cases when our children can serve as an example to us and inspire us to get involved in new projects. In my case, this happened thanks to my youngest daughter Natalia Syutkina who has been an eco-activist since she was a school student. As a student at the Government of the Russian Federation’s Financial University, she initiated her own project that she called Eco-Club EcoUni, and since 2015 she has been a co-organizer of the international environmental VuzEcoFest festival, that is being held for the tenth time this year!

With the support of SIBUR's Formula for Good Deeds social investment program, you organized, in 2019, the very first Clean Games eco-festival in Nizhnevartovsk, and then in 2022 you held it again using a SIBUR-provided grant. What inspired you to initiate this project?
Starting in 2015, my daughter Natalia has been taking part in the Clean Games project in Moscow, spearheaded by its founder Dmitry Ioffe. When I came to visit with her back in 2016, I got directly involved in this movement. Inspired by my daughter's experience, I thought back in 2019 that I would be able to initiate the Clean Games in Nizhnevartovsk on my own, thereby scaling the project up to the level of an environmental festival. It is for me somewhat of a family endeavor with all members of my family taking part in its organization: two of my daughters, my husband, and my nephews.

What is the Clean Games eco-festival?
The Clean Games follow a certain format. It is very clearly spelled out for its coordinators in different regions, who, before organizing such games in their regions have to sign a social franchise agreement. This means that we have certain obligations to the event’s organizer. That said, it is permissible to expand the festival’s boundaries by introducing additional activities for the benefit of our fans. We have introduced quite a variety of different eco-activities including a concert program, environmental quizzes and quests, marksmanship games and drawing activities for children involving using eco-paints to decorate ecological bags. That’s how we have grown to the level of an environmental festival in our region. The Clean Games’ primary focus is, above all, on sorting waste and refuse into distinct separate fractions on a certain square area within a certain timeframe. It is basically a series of active and fun team contests that are open to all who can field a team of 3 to 4 like-minded individuals and get it registered on our site. The Clean Games are interactive, too, so that anyone can follow the participants’ progress from anywhere in the country or anywhere else on the planet, as volunteers would be entering teams’ scored points in real time via their phones by using the teams’ reference numbers. That way, anyone would be able to see how much waste had been collected by each team, what types of waste that is, and who the winner is. This, of course, motivates the contestants, serves as a source of excitement and a desire to collect as much waste as possible to become a winner. The masterminds of the project had thought the format through so well that the scoring system is the most transparent and democratic. Moreover, by engaging student teams, and urban teams of workers and residents with their families, we are promoting environmental awareness and nurturing the culture of separate waste collection in a playful and fun way.

How do you pick the areas where the games’ participants will be searching for and sorting waste?
We try to pick these locations in such a way so that this would benefit the city and its residents as much as possible. On the one hand, this has an educational aspect to it, but on the other hand, the ultimate goal is to really collect garbage. This is why we mainly pick areas that are located within our city limits. In Nizhnevartovsk, we might focus on the Komsomolskoye Lake, or the embankment of the Ob River, where our contests are held for the most part, because these are areas where people like to spend their leisure time, where children come to play. There are a lot green areas there with many trees and plants. We also factor in whether such a green area is located near a construction site because then we would know for sure that there could well be a lot of garbage nearby.

What was the record amount of garbage ever collected during the Clean Games in Nizhnevartovsk?
When we held our Clean Games in 2023 on the coast of Lake Komsomolskoye, our contestants managed to collect about 3.5 tons of garbage in just a few hours, which is just staggering. Of the total volume of garbage collected, 73% got sorted. It was really surprising to see how many car tires got collected, there were really a lot of them. There are a lot marshy areas behind the tree line, and so our contestants have to pull all those tires out from these low-lying areas. It is, unfortunately, problematic to find a place where they would be accepted for recycling afterwards. The city's environmental services refuse to take them in and so we have to search for those recyclers who would agree to accept them. So, it is very important to understand beforehand where you can take the sorted garbage. The thing is that if we fail to find such recyclers, the waste that has not been sorted would be loaded into a general waste container and taken to a landfill. Of course, they promise us that they would additionally sort the waste and then send it on for further recycling, but, unfortunately, neither we nor the contestants of the Clean Games campaign are ever going to be able to confirm that visually.

Based on your experience, could you perhaps give a piece of advice to those who only plan to organize similar events?
First of all, you need to have a very strong desire to make our world a cleaner place, you need to love nature and be prepared for any unforeseen circumstances. In our case, weather can potentially become such a force majeure factor. When we were holding our Clean Games using a SIBUR grant in early June of 2022, the temperature did not once rise above minus 2 degrees centigrade, and it was pouring rain and raining sleet all day long. And it was too late to cancel or postpone the Games. So we had to make a decision quickly and set up tents where participants could come to warm up. We had to provide our contestants with electricity and hot drinks. Separately, we arranged food stations for those who had come there to wait and cheer for the contestants. Last year, a fire broke out in a nearby forest out of a sudden. However, the fire was quickly extinguished by the participants of the Clean Games even before emergency responders could arrive at the scene. My advice for organizers of such games would also be to stock up on first-aid kits and to have a duty medic on site to avoid any unpleasant surprises. We have also learned from our previous mistakes, when we once had 7 volunteers per 190 participants. It was a total disaster. So, now we are putting together a team of 13 to 15 volunteers well in advance. And all members of this team have a clear understanding of their distribution of duties and what each of them is supposed to be doing. Among other things, one has to be prepared for intricate organizational efforts and to interact with all of their city’s services and the city’s administration.

Environmental conservation is about more than just separate waste collection, as it is also a frame of mind. Which eco-habits have become a part of your daily routine?
Gradually, it really came to be a part of my life. My children were blazing the trail for me, and we caught up later. In my case, collection of spent batteries has become one of my new areas of focus. We always collect them separately and then take them to specialized collection points. One single family uses a staggering amount of plastics every month, and that is why we try to minimize our use of disposable plastics in our daily lives. Secondly, we make sure we clean all plastic caps and plastics from any food contamination, we dry them, store them separately and then take them over to dedicated collection points. The practice of separating biological and non-biological waste at home is also important, this is something we have also been doing at home for a very long time.

An eco-friendly lifestyle implies following many rules, and the sheer scale of those can scare off beginners. Could you give any recommendations to those who are just beginning their eco-journey?
You need to start small. At first, try to make sure that you collect biological and non-biological waste separately. Take your plastic waste to specialized collection points. You can really help and support the environmental movement by abandoning any use of disposable plastic items such as bags or cups. Carry vacuum flasks, reusable hard-plastic utensils and grocery bags instead. These are the easiest thing to do and not at all intimidating for those who would like to be a part of the eco-movement.

Would you care to share your plans for the future with us? Are you planning to initiate any new projects?
In 2025, we will definitely collect our strength and hold the Clean Games again. I think we are going to be able to take the project to a whole new level and hold the contest in several areas at once. We might even take it to other cities in Yugra. You started this interview by mentioning that I am an auditor and that, as one might think, has little to do with the environment. But, I think, this is also a matter of trust. Because we have access to such extensive platforms for accountants and auditors, we have already earned their trust. Whenever we put a word out, we have no problem gathering participants for our projects. This is why I am confident that we are going to be able to succeed in making all our plans come true.

In case you missed our past issues:

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March 15 is the Day of Good Deeds!

Krasnodar, Tymen, 14 March

Mom's Amazing Day Off

Nizhnekamsk, 12 March

March 8, Mothers' Day: taking stock of the results of SIBUR's annual charity project

11 March