Bag it up!
Ambitious climbers set to tackle Mount Everest are now being told to pick up their own up poop, as the mountain’s home country Nepal aims to combat a longstanding and smelly problem.
Climbers will now be given two odorless excrement bags before stepping foot on the world’s tallest mountain, but must come back down with them.
The biodegradable bags contain a chemical made to make human waste fragrance-free — a major boon to stop pollution and overall waste on the mountain over the years.
“The problem of human waste on Everest was very bad,” Diwas Pokhrel, first vice president of Everest Summiteers Association, told CNN. “It was polluting the mountain environment.”
In 2022 alone, climbers generated more than 77,000 pounds of human waste on Mount Everest, according to a report from Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee.
The cleanup helped lessen the risk to the health of nearby residents living near the mountain’s base.
The Himalayan Times reported a mountain cleanup campaign in 2023 that collected 78,722 pounds of waste and plastics from Everest.
The initiative was spearheaded by the Nepali Army, which collaborated with corporation Unilever Nepal, to take a step in the right direction by eliminating waste and pollution on the mountain.
But the reeking news comes just in time before an estimated 1,200 people are set to hike on Mount Everest, the Nepal Mountaineering Association says.
Tourists usually flock to the mountain between March and May in the spring and October through November in the fall.
Every year, experienced hikers are set to take their marks for their “summit pushes” on the mountain.
The summit is where the China–Nepal border runs across and climbers challenge themselves to reach it.
“Each person produces 250 grams (8.8 ounces) of excrement a day and they will spend 2 weeks on the higher camps for the summit push,” Jinesh Sindurakar, a member of the NMA said.
