A clean-up campaign has begun at Mount Everest, aiming to
airlift 100 tons of rubbish left behind by tourists and climbers of the world's
highest mountain.
On its first day, 1,200kg (2,600lbs) of waste was flown from
Lukla airport to Kathmandu for recycling.
Mountaineers are required to bring back whatever waste they
generate on their climb.
But every year, local guides gather hundreds of kilograms of
rubbish.
This year's clean-up campaign is focused on items that could
be recycled in the capital city, with privately-owned Yeti airlines helping to
transport. They will continue to ship piles of recyclable rubbish throughout
the year.
Most of the waste left on the mountain is empty beer bottles
and cans, empty food tins, and discarded mountaineering and trekking equipment.
That can include oxygen bottles, which are essential for
climbing at the highest altitudes.
Clean-up programs have been run by local guides, known as
Sherpas, for decades, but are now coordinated by the Sagarmatha Pollution
Control Committee (SPCC), named after the Nepalese name for the mountain.
Sherpa’s are still the ones who collect the high-altitude
waste.
According to SPCC, over 100,000 people visited the region
last year. About 40,000 were mountaineers or trekkers.
As well as managing the industrial waste left behind by
visitors, the SPCC and local guides have to deal with the biological waste left
by so many people. In 2015, the country's mountaineering association warned
that human faeces were becoming a health hazard.
Since then, the SPCC has built portable toilets around the
key mountain camps.
The high number of climbers has also increased safety
concerns - resulting in new rules late last year which banned solo climbers and
forces foreign climbers to go with a guide.
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