Nepal Army collects 33 tonnes of Waste from four Mountains

In a two-month-long cleaning campaign, teams led by the Nepal Army collected over 33 tonnes of waste, including human skeletons, from Mount Everest and three other peaks.

According to the Xinhua news agency, cleaning teams consisting of 92 people began their work on Everest, Mount Lhotse, Mount Kanchenjunga, and Mount Manaslu on April 5, which attract climbers from all over the world each year.

“Our teams collected 33,877 kg of wastes from the four mountains along with skeletons of two human bodies,” Himansu Khadka, a Nepal Army Brigadier General, said at a press conference.

The skeletons recovered from Kanchenjunga's base camp were handed over to Taplejung district police for identification and cremation after the cleaning teams sorted out biodegradable and non-biodegradable wastes weighing 7,227 kg and 26,650 kg, respectively.

Since 2019, the Nepal Army has led the clean-up campaign, collecting a total of 27.6 tonnes of waste in 2021 and 10 tonnes in 2019. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the campaign was halted in 2020.

“The cleaning is necessary to save the biodiversity of the mountains and lessen the impact of climate change,” Prabhu Ram Sharma, Chief of Army Staff, said at the press conference.