BEIJING, July 7 (Xinhua) -- According to clean-up personnel, the world's highest peak, Mount Everest, is the highest camp on the mountaineering route in Nepal, which is covered with dozens of tons of garbage, and it may take several years to clean it up.
The Associated Press reported on the 6th that the Nepalese government funded a clean-up team composed of Sherpas and soldiers to carry out garbage cleaning tasks on Mount Everest. This spring, the team removed 11 tons of trash and removed the remains of four victims and one skeleton.
According to the estimates of the leader of the clean-up team, Aung Babu Shcherpa, there may be as much as 40 to 50 tons of rubbish left in the highest camp, most of which is old tents, but also food packaging, fuel canisters, oxygen cylinders, hiking ropes and more. The camp is about 8,000 meters above sea level, and the garbage is often frozen in snow and ice, and it is frozen in different depths depending on the age of discarding.
According to Aung Babu, there are many challenges in cleaning up garbage at such high altitudes: first, the oxygen content is only one-third of that at sea level; second, there may be a sudden snowstorm; Third, the temperature may plummet; Fourth, it is not easy to dig through the ice and remove the garbage.
"We had to wait for good weather when the sun would be able to melt the ice," he said. However, it is impossible to wait for a long time at such a high altitude and in such an environment. The oxygen content is very low, and it is quite difficult to stay for a long time. ”
Aung Babu said that when the body of a victim was exhumed near the highest camp this spring, the clean-up team had to temporarily retreat to a low-altitude camp because of the sudden deterioration of the weather. The deceased was in a standing position, frozen in ice that needed to be broken to remove the body. It took the team two days of hard work to complete the task.
The remains of another victim are located at an altitude of 8,400 meters. Aung Babu's team spent 18 hours bringing the body to Camp 2, which was lower in altitude and then removed by helicopter.
Of the 11 tonnes of garbage removed from Everest this spring, 3 tonnes are decomposable substances that have been sent to villages near the foot of Everest for disposal. The remaining eight tonnes are transported down the mountain by porters and yaks and then trucked to the capital, Kathmandu, where they are sorted and recycled by a waste disposal company. Suhir Khadgar, an employee of the garbage disposal company, said: "The oldest garbage we received was from 1957, which was a rechargeable battery for a flashlight. ”
Aung Babu said that in recent years, Nepalese government authorities have tightened regulations to require climbers to take their garbage back down the mountain, so that the amount of new garbage discarded on Everest has been greatly reduced, and "most of the garbage [we cleaned up] came from climbers in the early years." (Yang Shuyi)