A group of fourteen highly dedicated volunteers are undertaking one of the world’s most ambitious clean-ups on the world’s tallest mountain.

In the first two weeks since the scheme was introduced the Everest Cleaning Campaign has collected in excess of three metric tons of trash off Everest’s slopes. The waste recovered includes empty bottles, cans, plastic containers and multitudinous types of discarded climbing gear.

Everest is one of the world’s most famous mountaineering sites with thousands of tourists visiting the area in recent years. But climbing is not a waste-free activity and decades of visitors have resulted in huge amounts of trash strewn on the mountain’s slopes.

Efforts at managing waste on the mountain’s 8848-metre-high slopes have been ongoing since 2011, with the Everest Summiteers Association announcing increasing number of visitors was having a significant impact on the sensitive natural ecosystem of the mountain.

The Everest Cleaning Campaign, which began on April 14, will continue for 45 days and officials hope they can remove at least another eight tonnes of trash as they move further up the mountain. The Nepalese government has provided an army helicopter to assist in removing the waste and disposing of it responsibly.

“Our goal is to extract as much waste as possible from Everest so as to restore glory to the mountain,” Dandu Raj Ghimire, Nepal’s tourism director, told The Hindu.

“Everest is not just the crown of the world but our pride.”

 

Positive Action

• We might not have the world’s tallest mountain, but we do have spectacular natural ecosystems all over Australia. Keep trash out of them by learning where and what you can recycle using our RecyclingNearYou website service.
• For easy recycling information, look out of the Australasian Recycling Label. It’s appearing on more products every day!

 

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Positive Environment News has been compiled using publicly available information. Planet Ark does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the original information and encourages readers to check the references before using this information for their own purposes.