Nepalese officials announced Thursday that new laws will require climbers to bring down just under 18 pounds of waste, along with their own personal garbage, from Mount Everest during ascents. But contrary to , the real issue isn鈥檛 garbage on the mountain鈥攊t鈥檚 ongoing Sherpa labor laws.聽
鈥淓verest does not have a trash problem,鈥澛国产吃瓜黑料 senior editor and Everest correspondent Grayson Schaffer says. 鈥淭hese new laws are a diversion tactic to distract from labor issues.” Schaffer has reported extensively on the welfare of Sherpas on Everest鈥攁nd those issues have especially聽come to the fore after 16 Sherpas died in an avalanche on April 18.
“The government wants to make it appear that they have control over a problem,” Schaffer says. “But this one does not exist.鈥
Though Everest does not have a garbage problem, there is a growing problem with sanitation. Climbers often defecate into crevasses above Base Camp. But the glacier鈥攁nd the waste entombed within it鈥攊s slowly making its way back toward Base Camp, says聽Schaffer. And climbers all drink that meltwater.聽
After massive non-government cleanups that took place in the 1990s, such as the聽, climbers know they ought to carry their waste down the mountain with them. 鈥淲e removed quite a bit of trash鈥擨 think 5,000 pounds, during one trip鈥攂ut that was our focus,鈥 says Rob Hess, the equipment leader of the SEE in 1994. “I would like to think that the laws from the Nepalese government are for the betterment of the mountain. But there is a bit of inequity.”