How several organizations keep Mount Everest clean

In May of this year, I had the opportunity to visit the famous Everest region in northeastern Nepal, also known as the Khumbu region. Over the course of 12 days, my trekking group, along with local hospitality organization Mountain Lodges of Nepal (MLN), walked through fragrant pine forests, slept in traditional villages including Monjo and Kongde, met Buddhist monks, and immersed myself in a part of the world that, despite abundant tourism, it feels shrouded in mystery. The highlight of my journey was Everest Base Camp, located at almost 18,000 feet above sea level; From here, hundreds of brave travelers (along with their large teams) try to climb the highest mountain in the world every spring.

Part of me was skeptical about the trip. Like many, I read with horror about the conditions on Everest: queues of climbers waiting to ascend, oxygen tanks and other rubbish dumped on the mountainside, and piles of human waste that cannot decompose at such high altitudes. I didn’t want to be part of the problem. (As I discuss further in my Afar article, MLN has taken us on a path that actively avoids high-traffic areas, in part to have a gentler impact on Earth.)

Earlier this year, Kanchha Sherpa, who is the last surviving member of Edmund Hillary’s summit team after their first ascent in 1953, called the summit “crowded and dirty” in an interview Guardian. “Some climbers simply dump debris into a crevice that is hidden at the time, but it will eventually flow down to base camp as the snow melts and carries them down.”

However, I kept an open mind and was pleasantly surprised to learn about local efforts to keep the area free of pollution and build resilience to climate change. One day while trekking, we visited Sagarmatha Next, a non-profit organization that works to reduce waste and sometimes recycle it into art. They transform bottle caps into 3D Himalayan sculptures (available for purchase) and reimagine other waste as large-scale works of art displayed in their high-rise gallery.

Tourism in the Everest region has “developed without sustainability in mind,” said Tommy Gustafsson, co-founder of the organization. The situation began to change in 1998 when local Sherpas founded an NGO here, the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC). Today, the SPCC manages 120 garbage containers and collects 40–50 tons of garbage annually from Everest Base Camp alone. (Gustafsson estimates that 200–250 tons of solid waste are generated annually in the Everest region.)

In addition to expedition groups attempting to conquer Everest, casual travelers to the Khumbu region can become directly involved in cleanup efforts. In the spring of 2022, SPCC and Sagarmatha Next jointly launched the “Carry Me Back” program, in which hikers voluntarily carry 2.2 pounds of trash from the mountain.

Climbers attempting to conquer Everest are being asked to do more. Given how quickly glaciers in the Himalayas are melting, human waste is having catastrophic consequences for fresh water supplies. To that end, 2024 marked the first year that Everest climbers were given “poo bags” to use and carry back with them.

Dawa Pangkarma Sherpa, vice-chairman of the SPCC, told me that in this first year the packages had a success rate of about 40 percent. “It’s good, but we need it to be higher,” he told me on the phone after the trip. “We can have a strong policy, but we went there and saw that people were physically very weak (when descending from the peak). At this moment, human life is more important than garbage.”

In particular, the Khumbu Icefall, located near the base camp, is dangerous for tourists when ascending and descending. Sherpa told me that next year the SPCC is going to experiment with a drone that can help carry about 40 pounds of debris at a time over the icefall.

“My general opinion is that most trekkers and climbers are quite conscientious and don’t want to destroy this place,” Gustafsson said. Rather, he said, it’s about creating infrastructure that makes it easy for travelers to participate in cleanup efforts and leave the Himalayas with greater benefits after their visit.

Everest’s climate warming

As with fragile environments around the world, there are irreversible signs of climate change that could derail even the best efforts to combat pollution. A few months after my trek, the glacial lakes above the picturesque village of Thame burst and caused a major landslide. Experts believe the failure was caused by higher ambient temperatures combined with an unusually heavy rainy season. Most of the village, including the MLN lodge where I spent two nights, no longer exists. Fortunately, the landslide did not cause any casualties.

“It was an unexpected disaster,” Sherpa said. “Usually we can predict a landslide in advance, but now no one can predict it. When I was six years old, we had a lot of snow every winter. There used to be four seasons, but now there are two: a short winter without much snow and a long monsoon.” To prevent similar disasters in the future, the SPCC is working with several climate experts who can advise on how to protect the region’s thousands of lakes, he said.

Adapting to climate change on Everest and the Khumbu region as a whole starts with collecting better data about what is happening throughout the region. To this end Kathmandu Post Last year, new weather data services were reported on the slopes of Mount Everest, highlighting the importance of monitoring weather changes, in part to help predict avalanches and other changes that could put human life at risk.

To ensure long-term sustainability, people will likely have to make some sweeping changes to how they interact with the region. Alan Arnett is a mountaineer who conquered Everest in 2011 and runs a popular blog among trekkers that covers some of the news about the mountain each climbing season. Like Sherpa, he was keenly aware of the future of the mountain. “The Khumbu Icefall is becoming thinner and many of the glaciers (there) are becoming thinner and therefore more unstable,” he said. “There are predictions that one day it will be impossible to climb it because it will be too dangerous.”

However, he is not completely hopeless. “Climate change may force us to rethink how we interact with the environment,” he said. “It gives the younger generation the opportunity to pioneer new routes; they will have to explore again instead of going down the same old route. Some mountains could use a decade without being climbed.”

Others have suggested moving Everest Base Camp, which sits on a thinning glacier. In a 2022 podcast conversation with Al JazeeraMountain guide Dawa Yangzon Sherpa said it would be good for the environment, although it would make the climb potentially more dangerous.

Regardless of how people interact with the Everest region in Nepal, including the routes trekkers use, Dawa Pangkarma Sherpa believes efforts to clean up and make Everest more resilient to climate change are a top priority. “Everest is not just for us, but for people all over the world,” he said. “We have to preserve it for the next generation.”