Mount Everest Turns Into World's Highest Rubbish Dump!

Mount Everest, the mountain peak that stands tall as the highest mountain on the Earth at 8,848 metres has attained a bad repute. Mountaineers scaling the tallest peak are leaving behind dirt and filth making it a high altitude rubbish dump. With more and more ambitious trekkers heading to scale the huge mountain, they are damaging the surroundings with their waste. Pemba Dorje Sherpa who has done the summit 18 times described it as a disgusting eyesore.

The number of climbers on the mountain has soared, there are 600 people who have climbed up in this year alone. The problem has definitely worsened. "The mountain is carrying tonnes of waste," said Dorje Sherpa. Moreover, the global warming is melting the glaciers, exposing the trash that has accumulated on the mountain. The first summit was done by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay 65 years ago and nowadays there are many people heading towards the highest peak. These people do not care and making it worse are the officials taking bribes to avoid the problem. 16-Year-Old Shivangi Pathak Becomes Youngest Woman to Scale Mount Everest.

"There is just not enough monitoring at the high camps to ensure the mountain stays clean,” he said. In the last two decades, the industry has only boomed so much so that there are fears of overcrowding. Plus more inexperienced mountaineers are scaling the mountains, thanks to many low-cost expeditions operate who are constantly wooing customers. These inexperienced ones add more to the rubbish. Discarded tents, clothes, climbing equipment, empty gas cylinders, human excrement now lie on the way to the summit.

The Sherpas, guides and workers carry the heavier items accompanying their climbers. While previously the climbers carried their own personal kits, now its all on the shoulders of the Sherpas. With so much luggage already, they cannot carry down the waste items. Damian Benegas, who has been climbing the Everest for two decades said that operators need to employ more high-altitude workers to ensure all clients, their kit and rubbish get safely up and down the mountain. This rising pollution on the mountain also enters the water source down the valley. ‘Checkmate Flat-Earth Society’: Man Shuts the Conspiracy of Earth Being Flat, Shares a Selfie from Mount Everest (View Pic)

Environmentalists are expressing concerns about the rising pollution and the treatment of sewage. Currently, the raw sewage has to be carried to next village from the base camp to be dumped in trenches. Now there is a plant to install a biogas plant near the Everest base camp which will turn the excreta into a useful fertiliser. Ang Tsering Sherpa, former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, has another solution of a dedicated team for rubbish collection. His expedition operator Asian Trekking, which has been running “Eco Everest Expeditions” for the last decade, has brought down over 18 tonne of trash during that time in addition to the eight-kilo climber quota.

Last month a strong cleanup team of 30 people collected 8.5 tonne of waste from the northern slopes, China’s state-run Global Times reported. Cleaning up of so much waste from high-altitude areas is not an easy task. There needs to be stricter action from the government as well as those who are aiming to scale the mountain should be responsible enough to effectively control the waste. The imposing of penalty has not brought any change in the waste makers. In 2013, Nepal implemented a $4,000 rubbish deposit per team that would be refunded if each climber brought down at least eight kg (18 pounds) of waste. But the deposit is nothing compared to the amount they have spent on the entire expedition.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 18, 2018 11:01 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).