The 45-day Everest Cleanup Campaign, led by the Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality of the Solukhumbu district, is one of Nepal's most ambitious cleanup projects for Everest, which has recently gained notoriety as the "highest garbage dump" of the world". The campaign, which began on April 14 with the new Nepalese year, aims to collect nearly 10,000 kg of Everest garbage.
Each year, hundreds of climbers, sherpas and high-altitude porters make their way to Everest, leaving tons of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste, including empty oxygen canisters, kitchen waste, beer bottles and fecal matter.
The campaign will collect and recover 5,000 kg of waste from the Everest Base Camp, 2,000 kg from the Collado Sur and a total of 3,000 kg from Field I and Field II, according to Danduraj Ghimire, general director of the Department of Tourism.
"Our goal is to extract as much waste as possible from Everest to return the glory to the mountain," Ghimire said at the press conference organized by the Kathmandu Tourism Department. "Everest is not only the crown of the world, but our pride."
The locals, conservationists and environmental activists of Khumbu have long pointed to the garbage that accumulates on Everest, warning of a possible environmental and health catastrophe. The government has also worried that garbage will stain the magnificence of the mountain.
In the past, there were attempts to clean up Everest, including a 2014 government-mandated provision that forces each climber to reach the peak with at least 8 kg of trash, the amount of trash estimated to be produced by a climber.
"If only the climbers brought their own waste, it would help a lot to keep Everest clean," Ghimire said. "It's not about the 8kg of waste, but to recover the waste they produce."
Nonprofit organizations, such as the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), have also conducted regular campaigns to keep Everest and the Khumbu region clean by collecting and disposing of waste.
In addition to the trash, the campaign will also try to recover Everest corpses. The cleaning campaign has already discovered four bodies of dead climbers on the mountain. Everest is a treacherous mountain and every year, a number of climbers do not return. Their bodies are often abandoned on the mountain, since bringing them back would be too great a risk. This has led the mountain to become a true cemetery.
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