A team of Asian and European mountaineers is set to embark on an expedition to the Mount Everest to clean up the garbage piled up on the slopes of the world’s highest peak.
Leader of the team, Han Wangyong of South Korea, told a press conference in Kathmandu on Sunday that mountaineers from Japan, South Korea, France, Italy and Australia are set to climb Mount Everest during this spring season– beginning April.
“We will try to collect as much as five tons of garbage from higher camps,” Wang-yong, who has scaled over a dozen highest peaks around the world, said. He informed that his team planned to climb to the South Col at 8,000 meters, which is littered with tents, food packaging, ropes and other equipment.
Nepali Sherpa guides will be helping the team in the clean up campaign, he said.
The team members, according to Han, are all volunteers who would also be taking up the cost of their trips and that the names of the participants are yet to be finalized. He was of the view that most climbers didn’t care about the piling rubbish on the mountain.
With an estimated 50 tons of rubbish piled up on the slope, Mount Everest (8,848 meters) is considered one of the most ‘polluted’ peaks around the world. Several clean-up campaigns have already been conducted on the peak in recent years.