Everest Is Drowning in Trash — And Nepal Is Done Asking Nicely

Mount Everest isn’t drowning in water. It’s drowning in rubbish.

Above 8,000 metres, where oxygen thins and temperatures plunge below -20°C, decades of human debris are piling up. Empty oxygen bottles, shredded tents, food packaging, batteries — and far worse — remain frozen in place, turning the world’s highest mountain into a slow-moving environmental disaster.

A typical Everest expedition lasts nearly two months, and during that time each climber generates around 12kg (26lb) of waste. For the past 11 years, Nepal attempted to control the problem with a refundable deposit: climbers paid $4,000 upfront and got it back if they returned with 8kg of trash.

On paper, it sounded sensible. In reality, it failed.

The problem wasn’t motivation — most climbers wanted their refund. The problem was where the rubbish came from. Collecting trash at Base Camp is easy. Dragging wrecked tents and oxygen cylinders out of the Death Zone is not. As a result, the lower slopes were repeatedly cleaned while the high camps continued to choke under decades of accumulated waste.

Even worse, the maths never added up. Climbers produced more waste than they were required to return, meaning trash was being left behind by design.

Now Nepal has changed tack.

The refundable deposit is gone. In its place is a mandatory, non-refundable cleanup fee, expected to sit around the same $4,000 mark. That money will feed directly into a permanent Mountain Welfare Fund, financing professional, large-scale cleanup operations rather than relying on goodwill.

The timing couldn’t be more critical.

During the 2024 spring season alone, 85 tons of waste were removed from the Everest region. Only 10 tons came from the upper camps. The rest was left behind by the 60,000 trekkers who visit Base Camp each year.

Human waste is now one of Everest’s most dangerous problems. In the sub-zero temperatures of the upper mountain, nothing decomposes. Waste remains frozen, preserved, and increasingly exposed as glaciers retreat. Recent studies have identified significant accumulations of human waste and bacteria at Camp IV — a biohazard now leaking into the watershed.

This is no longer just a climbers’ issue.

The glaciers of Sagarmatha National Park feed river systems that supply water to over a billion people downstream. As climate change accelerates, melting ice is flushing microplastics, battery chemicals, and human pathogens directly into freshwater sources relied upon by local communities.

Everest’s pollution problem has crossed the line from mountaineering inconvenience to environmental and public health threat.

Cleaning the mountain has traditionally fallen on the Sherpa community, who haul up to 20kg of waste across some of the most dangerous terrain on Earth. Porters are often paid by weight, carrying debris back to Base Camp where it is sorted, transported, or buried — a system that is increasingly overwhelmed by scale alone.

Technology may now play a role. Throughout 2025, heavy-lift drone trials showed promise, capable of flying 15kg of waste from the Death Zone to Base Camp in minutes — a journey that takes Sherpas hours at extreme altitude.

Regulations are tightening elsewhere too. Expedition teams must now inventory every item taken onto the mountain. Even prayer flags must be biodegradable. The era of leaving synthetic markers to decay in the wind for decades is officially over.

Climbing Everest already costs between $45,000 and $75,000. Nepal’s message is clear: it’s about to cost more.

That’s the price of preservation. Everest has been commodified for decades — but if it’s to remain the roof of the world, it can no longer be treated like a landfill.