Each year, scorers of climbers and Sherpas climb up Mt Everest shamelessly leaving behind tonnes of both biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste which includes empty oxygen canisters, kitchen waste, beer bottles and so on.
There are tonnes of plastic and organic waste, that has been lying there on Mt Everest for decades, most of which are left behind by mountaineers who climb up the mountain.
Nepal has by far collected more than 3,000 kilograms of solid waste from the world’s highest mountain since April 14. Nepal started this ambitious campaign aimed at bringing back tonnes of garbage.
The 45-day ‘Everest Cleaning Campaign’, chaired by Solukhumbu district’s Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality started on April 14 with the Nepali new year and works towards collecting around 10,000 kilogrammes of garbage from Mt Everest.
The ultimate objective is to restore glory to the mountain. It has been learnt that around 23 million Nepalese rupees will be splashed on the campaign.
Now a total of 3,000 kilogrammes of solid waste has been collected from Mt Everest as part of the cleaning expedition. Out of the garbage collected, 2,000 kg has been sent to Okhaldhunga while the left out 1,000 kilogrammes were brought to Kathmandu using Nepali Army helicopters for disposal process.
“Our team has now reached the Everest Base Camp for the cleaning campaign. All the necessary things including food, water and shelter have already been arranged there,” Dandu Raj Ghimire, Director General of Department of Tourism, was quoted as saying by The Himalayan Times.
Roughly around 5,000-kg of garbage will be collected from the Everest Base Camp, while hile 2,000-kg of garbage will be garnered from the South Col region and around 3,000-kg will be collected from Camp II and Camp III area.
In addition to that, the team will also bring dead bodies from the dangerous mountains, just in case, if they can locate any. So far, the team located four dead bodies while cleaning the base camp.