Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy signed a strategic project referred to as Clean Air. The project aims to reduce vehicular pollution as well as cut down on emissions coming from stationary points. The number of vehicles used in Yekaterinburg has doubled over the last 10 years (from 167,000 cars in 1995 to 441,000 in 2005), and experts predict that these figures will rise by another 35% to 50% by 2015. To make matters worse, many Yekaterinburg-based enterprises use obsolete technologies and worn-out equipment, which is why emissions are often released in the air when they are under-recycled or not recycled at all. Only 14.1% of the emission points have gas-purifying facilities, and the general recovery efficiency comes to 47.5%. Burning production and construction waste and household rubbish as well turf also contributes to the atmospheric pollution as such highly toxic pollutants as nitric oxide, dioxin, and some others are emitted.

The Clean Air project provides for 2.122m RUR worth of investments to be used until 2015.