This article originally appeared on The Inertia.
Humans have become pretty reliable for leaving trash all over the place. From the deepest reaches of the ocean to the highest points on Earth, human-made debris has made its way into every nook, cranny, recess, niche, alcove, cubbyhole, opening, and any other word that shows up when I Google “synonym for nook.”
One of the places that’s become infamous for the sheer amount of garbage is Mount Everest. Since the 1980s, Nepalese authorities have been attempting to deal with it, but they’ve recently announced that they will be changing tack.
A few years ago, Nepal made it a requirement for Everest summit hopefuls to pack their trash: 18 pounds of it, to be exact. It’s estimated that there are around 50 tons of trash littered all over the world’s highest peak, so climbers were required to take garbage back down the mountain — theirs or not, it didn’t matter — or give up a $4,000 deposit.
That policy has not cleaned up the mountain as much as officials hoped. So now, all Everest climbers will be required to pay a non-refundable clean-up fee — it’s likely to cost about $4,000, according to Nepalese officials.
An Update of Existing Policy
Under the mountain’s prior policy, authorities were hopeful that the camp on South Col in particular would look a little more pristine and a little less like a trash dump.
But $4,000 was apparently an acceptable price tag for many mountaineers who chose to downclimb unencumbered by extra trash. Also, many climbers would simply take 18 pounds of garbage from a lower camp, where the issue isn’t quite so glaring.
“From higher camps, people tend to bring back oxygen bottles only,” Tshering Sherpa, CEO of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, told the BBC. “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 waste piling up.”
There is one huge fault in the 18-pound rule: On average, an Everest climber will produce about 26 pounds of waste on the mountain over the 6 or so weeks it takes to get from bottom to top and back again. That’s 8 pounds more than the requirement (not to mention the pile of detritus that was already up there). So it makes sense that the problem hasn’t gone away.
Add to that the fact that no one’s really monitoring what’s going on at the higher points, and you’ve got a thin-aired trash dump that draws a lot of tourists — all of whom have more trash to contribute.
“Apart from the check point above the Khumbu Icefall,” Tshering Sherpa explained, “there is no monitoring of what climbers are doing.”
Making a New Plan
Moving forward, things are going to change in hopes that a different plan will actually do something to mitigate the mounting issue.
Climbers will be required to pay a non-refundable clean-up fee that will be used to create a checkpoint at Camp 2. The funds will also pay rangers to monitor the higher parts of the mountain, and hopefully ensure the climbers are bringing down what they’ve brought up.
The BBC reported that “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.” This is good news to the locals and anyone who cares about the state of the world’s most famous peak.
“We had been questioning the effectiveness of the deposit scheme all this time because we are not aware of anyone who was penalized for not bringing their trash down,” said Mingma Sherpa, chairperson of the Pasang Lhamu rural municipality. “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.”
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