Nepal will abandon the “failed” Mount Everest garbage deposit plan

Nepalese officials told the BBC that an initiative to persuade climbers to bring their rubbish down from Mount Everest is being discontinued because it was a failure. Climbers had to pay a $4,000 (£2964) deposit, which they would only receive back if they returned with at least 8 kg (18 lbs) of garbage.

It was believed that it would start addressing the garbage problem on the highest mountain in the world, which is thought to be covered with about 50 tonnes of debris. However, the program is being shelved since it “failed to show a tangible result” after 11 years, even though the trash is still building up.

Himal Gautam, director at the tourism department, told the BBC that not only had the garbage issue “not gone away”, but the deposit scheme itself had “become an administrative burden”.

Tourism ministry and mountaineering department officials told the BBC most of the deposit money had been refunded over the years – which should mean most climbers brought back their trash. But the scheme is said to have failed because the rubbish climbers have brought back is usually from lower camps – not the higher camps where the garbage problem is worst.

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

“Other things like tents and cans and boxes of packed foods and drinks are mostly left behind there, that is why we can see so much of waste piling up.”

According to Mr. Sherpa, a climber can produce up to 12 kg (26 lbs) of waste on average while spending up to six weeks climbing and acclimating to the mountain.

Authorities in the Everest region stated that the biggest problem has been a lack of surveillance, aside from the “flawed rule” requiring climbers to carry back less rubbish than they make. Authorities in Nepal are hoping that a new plan will work better.According to the revised regulation, climbers will be required to pay a non-refundable clean-up charge in order to establish a checkpoint at Camp Two. Additionally, mountain rangers will be dispatched to higher areas of the mountain to ensure that climbers remove their rubbish.

Tourism ministry officials said it will most probably be $4,000 per climber – the same amount as deposit money – and will come into effect once passed by the parliament.

Mingma Sherpa, chairperson of the Pasang Lhamu rural municipality, said the change was something the Sherpa community had lobbied for for many years now.

“We had been questioning the effectiveness of the deposit scheme all this time because we are not aware of anyone who was penalised for not bringing their trash down.

“And there was no designated fund but now this non-refundable fee will lead to creation of a fund that can enable us to do all these clean-up and monitoring works.”

According to Jaynarayan Acarya, a spokesperson for the ministry of tourism, the non-refundable fee was created “to immediately address the pressing problem of waste on our mountains” as part of a recently unveiled five-year mountain clean-up action plan.

It is estimated that there are tons of rubbish on Everest, including human waste, which does not decompose on the upper parts of the mountain due to the cold temperatures. However, no study has been conducted to quantify the amount of waste on Everest.