Mount Everest Piling Up With Litter: Nepal Now Has A 5-Year Clean-Up Plan

Nepal has rolled out a five-year Everest Cleaning Action Plan to tackle the problem of growing waste on the world's tallest mountain and other high Himalayan peaks. The plan comes after criticism that Mount Everest was turning into a dumping ground.

The plan, drafted by the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, will run from 2025 to 2029 and keep Nepal's mountains clean while making climbing safer.

"Before going, I always saw images of beautiful Everest on TV. I thought it would be like that. But once I got there, I found litter everywhere," Japanese climber Ken Noguchi told Kathmandu Post.

The five-year Everest action plan includes a mandatory clean mountain briefing, which requires teams to attend a briefing on maintaining mountain cleanliness before every climbing expedition.

On Mount Everest, a temporary waste collection centre will be set up at Camp 2. Every climber and expedition team will be required to bring back a minimum amount of waste from higher camps and submit it at Camp 2, with the aim of reducing trash on the mountain.

Over the next five years, the Everest Cleaning Action Plan will explore new ways to manage waste on high mountains.

Ropeways and drones may be used to collect trash from areas above the base camps where climbers frequently go, and a GPS tracking system will be tested to help locate human remains on the mountains, according to The Wire.

In 2024, the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), responsible for controlling pollution in the Khumbu region around Mount Everest, together with the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality, made it mandatory for climbers to use poop bags above the base camp to manage human waste.

The new five-year plan also talks about limiting the number of climbers on the mountain. In recent years, there have been reports of "traffic jams" on Everest, where too many climbers try to ascend at the same time.

The action plan states that laws and policies will be made to determine how many climbers can ascend and at what times, taking into account the mountain's natural capacity, short windows of favourable climbing weather, and potential congestion on the slopes.

The new action plan also includes a feasibility study to move Everest Base Camp, aiming to reduce environmental damage as more climbers visit the mountain.

Himal Gautam, director at the Department of Tourism, said, "The government has decided to study whether relocating the base camp is feasible for the sustainability of the mountain. The base camp is overcrowded and fragile. The study will provide a perspective on an alternative site."

Mount Everest has long been polluted with trash left behind by climbers, guides, Sherpas, and porters, including oxygen canisters, plastic bottles, ropes, food waste, and human excreta. Plastic is especially harmful, as it can take up to 500 years to decompose; burning it releases toxic fumes, while burying it contaminates the soil.

In 2019, the Everest Cleanup Campaign was launched to tackle the growing waste problem on Mount Everest. The campaign was led by the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality in coordination with the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC).

But there were questions about how the funds were spent, the lack of transparency, and the absence of a long-term plan. These issues led the government to design a policy-backed, long-term action plan.

The Nepali Army also took part in cleaning both Mount Everest and Lhotse during this effort. During the 2019 campaign, the team collected 10,800 kilograms (around 10.8 tonnes) of waste, including biodegradable and non-biodegradable materials, and also recovered four human bodies from the mountain.

So far, the Nepali Army have collected a total of 119,056 kilograms, 12 human bodies and four sets of human remains, according to New Business Age.

Between 2000 and 2007, Noguchi and his team helped collect around 90 tonnes of waste from Everest. However, 25 years later, the problem of garbage on the mountain has grown even worse.

Nepal is home to eight of the world's 14 tallest mountains, all higher than 8,000 metres. The country also has 28 mountain ranges, which are the sources of over 6,000 rivers and streams.