Environment

Tourists urged to stop littering on Mount Everest

Published

10 years ago

August 30, 2014

Blue & Green Tomorrow

It may be one of the most remote, inhospitable tourist destinations on Earth, but not even Mount Everest is safe from litter. Earlier this week, Nepalese authorities urged mountaineers to recycling their waste, and stop leaving in on the mountain’s pristine peak.

The world’s highest mountain stands at 29,029 feet (8,848m) tall, but as increasing numbers of adventurers seek to replicate the feat first completed by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, it is becoming more and more cluttered.

Earlier this year, the authorities introduced a new rule requiring all those who brave Everest to return with at least eight kilograms of waste, as well as all the waste they produce themselves on their journey.

Those who return to basecamp without their waste face a range of penalties, from fines to a ban on returning.

Now, the Nepalese authorities are calling on all mountaineers to bring their disposable refuse to be recycled in Kathmandu.

“I’ve seen this garbage,” Frits Vrijlandt, president of the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation told NBC News.

“Gas canisters, oxygen bottles, broken tent remains, sleeping bag parts, equipment that people use for carrying them.

“It’s not a trip to Disneyland.”

Photo: Göran Höglund (Kartläsarn) via Flickr