Trash-free Mount Everest: achievable sustainable solutions

By Suzanne OConnell, Wesleyan University and Alton C. Byers, University of Colorado Boulder Trash collected in a 2019 cleanup that removed 24,000 pounds (10,000 kilograms) of garbage from Mount Everest. Narayan Maharjan/NurPhoto via Getty Images Spring is go time for climbers who hope to summit Mount Everest, Earth’s highest peak above sea level. Hundreds of mountaineers from around the world travel to Asia in April and May, headed for base camps in Nepal and Tibet. But jagged peaks won’t be the only thing they see. Especially on Everest’s more heavily traversed Nepal side, they’ll find fields of garbage – including cans, bottles, plastic and human and animal excrement. Each year, more than 60,000 trekkers and climbers visit the Sagarmatha National Park and Buffer Zone, a high-altitude swath of the Khumbu region in northeast Nepal that includes Everest and seven other peaks. Some 400 to 500 climbers attempt to summit Everest every year. The trash problem first became evident in the 1980s and 1990s, when climbing on the mountain and trekking in Khumbu began to increase. Climber and trekker numbers have further skyrocketed in the past 20 years. Most coverage of this issue focuses on negative and sensational aspects, such as...