The accelerating rate of waste accumulation even outpaces the persistent cleaning efforts of the Sherpa people in the Khumbu region, who revere the mountain as the backbone of their survival and cultural identity
From being a vital site of spiritual reverence and mountaineering challenge, Mount Everest in Nepal is now a mainstream revenue-earning source for the mountaineering-based tourism industry of the country. According to the Nepal Tourism Board's 2026 permit royalty report, revenue earned from this peak alone accounted for 86% of the total permit revenue earnings of US$5,079,380between March 1 and April 15.
With high revenue earning comes high climbers' footfall. The number of summiteers scaling the peak is roughly estimated to grow at a yearly rate of circa 5% between 2013 and 2024, based on Wikipedia statistics of the number of summiteers during these years.
Over the years, overcrowding of climbers has subjected the mountain to an exacerbating environmental crisis driven by the ever-increasing dump of expedition wastes. The accelerating rate of waste accumulation even outpaces the persistent cleaning efforts of the Sherpa people in the Khumbu region, who revere the mountain as the backbone of their survival and cultural identity.
In 2019, the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality (KPLRM),in partnership with the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) – a local organisation of Sherpas since 1991– launched the Everest Cleanup Campaign. In 2025 alone, SPCC cleared more than 110,000 kilos of expedition garbage on Everest and over 270,000 kilos of waste from the surrounding trails and villages. Apart from this, several other philanthropic, private, and even Nepali Army-run cleanup campaigns have been running parallelly since 2000.
Despite such proliferation of cleanup efforts and initiatives, visible trash removal can address only the tip of the iceberg. Non-biodegradable waste, such as micro and nano plastics detectedin Everest's snow, soil, and water, is a matter of graver concern.
These plastic pollutants are intensifying the onslaught of elevation-dependent climate change by further reducing the reflectivity of snow, accelerating the pace of melting and adding to the burden of meltwater contamination. These also adversely affect soil health and the fragile high-mountain ecosystems and contaminate the local food chains in turn.
Not apparent to the human eye, these pollutants are posing a surreptitiously encroaching environmental calamity to the mountain and its ecosystems.
Mandated by the KPLRM, SPCC has launched new waste management regulations for the climbers from this season, including mandatory use of poop bags and carrying back at least two kilos of garbage from above Camp II, alongside the deployment of a waste monitoring team.
Simultaneously, the government's first ever five-year Action Plan for Mountain Cleaning (2025-2029) approved in December 2025,has also proposed the deployment of mountain rangers for waste monitoring, regulation enforcement, and an evaluation study for relocating the Base Camp, along with replacing the refundable $4,000 deposit with a non-refundable clean-up fee, among other things.
Can these initiatives, tied especially to the long-term action plan, save the Everest from the waste pollution peril?
Intuitively, a monitoring–reporting–evaluation approach can potentially foster stricter accountability. But one must also remember that enforcing waste management on Everest is already fraught with fragmented governance and coordination challenges that impede end-to-end accountability for environmental compliance.
For instance, while the federal government's Ministry of Tourism manages the permit issuance for Everest expeditions to ensure safety and environmental compliance, the Sagarmatha National Park authority manages the expedition routes but without any clear compliance enforcement authority. On the other hand, the local municipality is responsible for waste management but does not have any jurisdiction above Base Camp.
In the absence of cohesive governance, some crucial gaps, such as the lack of rules, guidelines, and monitoring of climbers to enforce them to take non-recyclable waste back to their countries of origin, and proper safety training to Sherpa porters and guides, go unnoticed, among other things. Although local collectives like SPCC continue with their efforts towards environmental and personal safety through the decades.
In this context, the Action Plan 2025-2029, in conjunction with the Integrated Tourism Bill passed in the National Assembly in February 2026, can be the potential icebreakers in governance. While the action plan makes explicit mention of stricter rules for gears and annual campaigns for retrieving buried old wastes, alongside waste targeting and mandatory waste management, GPS-tracking and checkpoint-system-based monitoring and accountability, the bill makes some key provisions for stricter rules for safety and environment-compliant mountaineering, and a permanent environment fund for high-mountain cleaning initiatives.
Together, they lay the foundation for a long-term vision for waste management on Everest. A foundation potent with the prospect of a transformation in governance behaviour. A transformation that can come through acknowledging local stewardship and making them solution co-creators; by sharing federal revenues from clean-up fees and permit royalties with locally managed mountain welfare fund; by setting up a clear chain of compliance authority from Lukla to the summit; and by integrating AI technology and waste-to-energy recycling commitments into long-term waste management actions.
On this International Mother Earth Day let us pledge for a future-proof Mount Everest.
Tamang was previously affiliated with ICIMOD, while Sherpa is CEO, SPCC
A version of this article appears in the print on April 22, 2026, of The Himalayan Times.