India-Nepal team collects over 4,000 kg waste from Everest

Mount Everest, at 8,850 metres is the world's tallest mountain. The joint Indo-Nepal team cleaned up the peak and retrieved 4000 kg of solid waste.

In a first of its kind initiative to clean Mount Everest, a joint Army team of India and Nepal has collected over 4,000 kg of garbage that was polluting the slopes of the world’s tallest peak. The solid waste, which included various goods discarded by mountaineers in course of their Everest expeditions, was handed over to the Mount Everest Pollution Control Committee in Namche of Solukhumbu district on Monday.

The team involved Army personnel from Nepal and India as part of the Joint Sagarmatha Mountaineering and Cleanliness Campaign 2013.

The team had spent one and half months collecting waste scattered in the world’s highest mountain and its base camp, The Himalayan Times reported.

A function was organised at the Nepal Army’s Baraha Dal Battalion in Namche to hand over the waste, the Nepal Army’s Directorate of Public Relations (DPR) said in a statement.

The team collected 2250 kg of bio-hazardous waste and 1,760 kg of less toxic waste. The Committee said it will dump or destroy the waste without affecting the environment.