Nepal to abandon ‘failed’ Mount Everest waste disposal system

A plan to encourage climbers to bring their waste back from Mount Everest has been abandoned – with Nepalese authorities telling the BBC it was a failure.

Climbers had to pay a $4,000 (£2,964) deposit, which they would only get back if they brought back at least 8kg (18lb) of waste with them.

It was hoped this would begin to tackle the waste problem on the world’s highest peak, which is estimated to be covered in some 50 tonnes of waste.

But after 11 years – and while the waste was still accumulating – the project was abandoned because it “did not produce tangible results”.

Himal Gautam, director of the tourism department, told the BBC that not only has the waste problem “not gone away”, but the deposit system itself had “become an administrative burden”.

Officials from the Ministry of Tourism and the Department of Mountaineering told the BBC that most of the deposit had been refunded over the years – which should mean that most climbers were bringing their waste back.

But the project reportedly failed because the trash brought back by the climbers generally came from lower camps and not from the higher camps, where the trash problem is most serious.

“From higher camps, people tend to bring back only oxygen cylinders,” said Tshering Sherpa, director general of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, which runs an Everest checkpoint.

“Other things like tents, cans and cartons of packaged food and drinks are mostly left there, which is why we can see so much trash piling up.”

Mr Sherpa said on average a climber produces up to 12kg (26lb) of waste on the mountain where they spend up to six weeks acclimatizing and climbing.

Besides the “wrong rule” that requires climbers to bring back less waste than they produce, authorities in the Everest region said a lack of monitoring was the main challenge.

“Apart from the checkpoint above the Khumbu Icefall, there is no control over what climbers do,” Mr Sherpa said.

Nepalese authorities hope a new program will be more effective.

Under the new rule, officials said, climbers’ non-refundable cleanup fees will be used to establish a checkpoint at camp two and also deploy mountain guards who will continue to go to the highest parts of the mountain to ensure climbers drop off their trash.

Tourism Ministry officials said that amount would most likely amount to $4,000 per climber – the same amount as the security deposit – and would take effect once passed by parliament.

Mingma Sherpa, chairman of Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality, said the change was something the Sherpa community had been pushing for for many years now.

“For all this time, we have questioned the effectiveness of the deposit system, because we do not know of anyone who has been penalized for not depositing their waste.

“And there was no designated fund, but now this non-refundable fee will lead to the creation of a fund that can allow us to do all of this cleanup and monitoring work.”

This non-refundable fee will be part of a recently introduced five-year action plan for cleaning up the mountains. Jaynarayan Acarya, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Tourism, said it was designed “to immediately address the urgent problem of waste in our mountains.”

Although there are no studies quantifying waste on Everest, it is estimated that there are tons of it, including human excrement that does not decompose in the highest part of the mountain due to freezing.

And the growing number of climbers each year, averaging around 400 with much larger support staff, poses a growing concern for the sustainability of mountaineering.