A scheme to encourage climbers to bring their waste down from Mount Everest is being scrapped - with Nepalese authorities telling the BBC it has been a failure.
Climbers had been required to pay a deposit of $4,000 (£2964), which they would only get back if they brought at least 8kg (18lbs) of waste back down with them.
It was hoped it would begin to tackle the rubbish problem on the world’s highest peak, which is estimated to be covered in some 50 tonnes of waste.
But after 11 years - and with the rubbish still piling up - the scheme is being shelved because it “failed to show a tangible result”.
As it essentially only caters to the wealthy, I am not shocked. Make it $50k, not like they won’t want to climb Everest.
they should make them climb K2 first.
Yes, I’m thinking this was the real issue.
Maybe put up a nice instagrammable leaderboard to gamify it, and so people will be driven to virtue signal, and anyone who can’t looks as bad as they’re being.
Make the deposits higher, then pool the deposits of those that fail to meet the requirements. Then at the end of the year award the pooled money to the climbers who returned the most trash. As someone else said gamify it…
hear me out.
only rich dumbasses climb Everest. $4000 is just the fee to climb on top of the regular fee to them.
instead of charging a fee, make it a requirement to return with x pounds of trash or face jail time.
Raise the price to ONE MILLION DOLLARS, and then just have sherpas empty out the air tanks of everyone who goes there. We’ll have wealth inequality stamped out in a couple years.
Didn’t they make a rule that you have to climb one of the other large mountains before climbing Everest as well. So first you have to pay to fly to another country/continent and pay to climb there.
You can pay your way to get whatever you want. Any rules or regulations are just speed-bumps to the wealthy.
Honestly, at this point, it’s fine. Let them all all crowd that death mountain and die in herds, and in another 50 million years AI/alien archeologists studying the Himalayan meadows will dig down and find a layer of oxygen-tank iron and fossilized rich-people remains.
Close the mountain. If you can’t take care of it, you don’t deserve to get to climb it.
Money. It’s all about money. Nobody will “close” the mountains.
When you’re paying over 50k to climb the mountain anyway, an additional 4k isn’t very much.
and its usually only rich westerners for the most part, or rich people from asia.
Double or triple the deposit. That might help.
Wow, never been within many thousands of miles of Everest, but I’m quite frankly shocked by that “50 tonnes” estimate. Yikes!
I wonder at what altitude this is, like is it piled up near a bunch of camps towards the base, or higher up?
I always pictured it more akin to a much more vertical Antarctica or something.
That’s really sad. :(
Aren’t there a bunch of dead people up there too?
There are. Of the 344 people who have died attempting the summit, at least 200 are still up there. You’re literally in the process of slowly dying above the 8000 meter mark, which is why it’s always deemed too dangerous to try and retrieve them.
That’s only 850m shy of the summit tho. How many people make it to 8km and can’t make the last ~10%?
A lot. The weather on Everest can turn on a dime, and if you don’t turn around and start back at the first sign of inclement weather, it can blow up in an instant and murder you.
Tons of summit attempts end with having to be abandoned just short of the finish.
I reckon about 344.
344 plus a lot more who turn around and don’t die.
The rich would never go near a municipal dump, much less climb a literal mountain of garbage… Unless it’s located in the highest point in the world, then they’d happily pay for the privilege.
So where was the money going?
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.”
