Environmentalists call for portable toilets on Everest
‘Somewhere civilized to go when nature calls’:
NEPAL: An environmental group is asking the Nepal government
to consider installing portable toilets on Mount Everest for climbers
caught short at the roof of the world.
Eco Himal says the thousands of trekkers who set off from the South
Base Camp in Nepal each year would do a better job of keeping the place
clean if they and their porters had somewhere civilised to go when
nature called.
“Human waste is a problem, of course,” said the group’s director,
Phinjo Sherpa. “I am merely suggesting that if we have public toilets
they can be used.”
Many groups bring expedition toilet cans, but Phinjo Sherpa said
porters were often left with little choice but the nearest snowdrift.
Environmental activists say Everest is littered with the detritus of
past expeditions, including human waste and mountaineers’ corpses, which
can take decades to decompose because of the extreme cold.
Phinjo Sherpa said installing the toilets would be discussed as part
of a wider waste management plan being prepared by the government that
would encompass popular peaks throughout the Everest region.
“If there could be two or three toilets that would be good but this
is just at the planning phase. We will have to decide what is a good
idea and what isn’t,” he said.
However, the idea has been rejected by some of Eco Himal’s partners
within the Nepal-based climbing community.
“The ice moves around a lot during the year. If you built toilets at
the base camp, the ice would shift and the structures would fall down,”
said Wangchhu Sherpa, president of the Everest Summiteers Association.
Climbers spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to reach the
8,848-metre (29,028-foot) summit of Everest, but campaigners say few pay
much attention to the rubbish they leave behind.
There is no official figure on how much trash has been left on the
mountain, but the debris of 50 years of climbing has given Everest the
name of the world’s highest dumpster.
The privately-funded Eco Everest Expedition, a Nepal-based coalition
of environmentalists campaigning to keep the mountain clean, has
collected more than 13 tonnes of garbage, 400 kilos of human waste and
four bodies since 2008.
AFP |