Climbers Remove Over 2 Tons of Garbage from Mount Everest

One benefit of travel COVID-19 travel restrictions is it gave a group of mountain climbers the opportunity to collect more than 2.2 tons of garbage from the Mount Everest base camp in Nepal, The Indian Express reports.

With more people climbing Mount Everest, its base camps have become increasingly littered with trash such as plastic bottles, cans, food wrappers, and oxygen cylinders. While the pandemic restricted global travelers from coming to the mountain, the local climbing community made the most of the lull by spending 47 days collecting litter.

The initiative is led by Nepali climber and environmental activist Dawa Steven Sherpa, who has been removing trash from the mountain since 2008. Other climbers have become involved as well. Nepali climber Nirmal Purja is planning an ambitious campaign to carry trash down from the peaks of the Himalaya for processing and recycling as part of the Great Mountain Cleanup, Lonely Planet reports. The first phase of the plan targets peak K2 in Pakistan this summer, moving on to Mount Everest in 2022, and Manaslu in 2023.

Purja is famous among climbers for completing the first-ever winter ascent of K2, the world’s second-highest peak, and climbing all 14 of the world’s highest peaks in a single season. He is turning his attention to cleaning these same peaks he conquered, one at a time.