A scheme to encourage climbers to bring their waste down from Mount Everest is being scrapped - with Nepalese authorities telling the BBC it has been a failure.
Climbers had been required to pay a deposit of $4,000 (£2964), which they would only get back if they brought at least 8kg (18lbs) of waste back down with them.
It was hoped it would begin to tackle the rubbish problem on the world’s highest peak, which is estimated to be covered in some 50 tonnes of waste.
But after 11 years - and with the rubbish still piling up - the scheme is being shelved because it “failed to show a tangible result”.
Make the deposits higher, then pool the deposits of those that fail to meet the requirements. Then at the end of the year award the pooled money to the climbers who returned the most trash. As someone else said gamify it…
hear me out.
only rich dumbasses climb Everest. $4000 is just the fee to climb on top of the regular fee to them.
instead of charging a fee, make it a requirement to return with x pounds of trash or face jail time.
Raise the price to ONE MILLION DOLLARS, and then just have sherpas empty out the air tanks of everyone who goes there. We’ll have wealth inequality stamped out in a couple years.
Didn’t they make a rule that you have to climb one of the other large mountains before climbing Everest as well. So first you have to pay to fly to another country/continent and pay to climb there.
You can pay your way to get whatever you want. Any rules or regulations are just speed-bumps to the wealthy.
Honestly, at this point, it’s fine. Let them all all crowd that death mountain and die in herds, and in another 50 million years AI/alien archeologists studying the Himalayan meadows will dig down and find a layer of oxygen-tank iron and fossilized rich-people remains.
Double or triple the deposit. That might help.
As it essentially only caters to the wealthy, I am not shocked. Make it $50k, not like they won’t want to climb Everest.
I like how these wealthy turds still think it’s impressive they “climbed” mount Everest.
Like fuck, if you do it in a group of 100 people and you’ve got 10 guides carrying your bags who’ve done it a thousand times, and youre not even going to the highest or toughest part, im not even going to pretend to be impressed.
Anyone who says they climbed Everest is just a self-absored rich asshole.
More than very likely they are a self-absorbed ladder-climbing asshole or a trust fund baby asshole.
Yes, I’m thinking this was the real issue.
Maybe put up a nice instagrammable leaderboard to gamify it, and so people will be driven to virtue signal, and anyone who can’t looks as bad as they’re being.
Close the mountain. If you can’t take care of it, you don’t deserve to get to climb it.
Money. It’s all about money. Nobody will “close” the mountains.
the guides who make their living taking people up the mountain would be out of a job. the industry supports thousands of people, shutting it down would mean those families and their children would starve.
So it’s ok to destroy the environment just so a few more people can “earn” a living being servants of the ultra rich?
Glass houses, “friend.” As an English-speaking person posting on Lemmy, your lifestyle is almost certainly 10x worse for the environment than some Sherpa’s is. And you probably serve the ultra rich too, one way or another.
So what you’re saying is we should dispose of the wealthy and spread their assets and wealth out and lift up the lives of the Sherpas and other less fortunate individuals?
I agree. Fuck the oligarchs and the multimillionaires who zealously support them.
No, but it would be even worse to suddenly cut off the primary income for people relying on it to survive.
How much do you earn compared to the average rural Nepali, and do you ever do anything bad for the climate?
This isn’t even a climate change issue, it’s just garbage that can be picked back up, and which is only ever seen by other climbers.
is it OK to let little kids starve when you can feed them and clean up the environment at the same time? and what’s with this quotation marks around the word earn? that’s some privileged bullshit from somebody who has clearly never been hungry or homeless.
When you’re paying over 50k to climb the mountain anyway, an additional 4k isn’t very much.
How much waste they take up with them?
If it’s more than 8kg, I’m guessing that the only missing requirement for the refund is to increase the number to make it that every climber brings down more than they take up.
In other words, put every climber on the scales before they go up and unless they weigh more when they come back, they don’t get their money back.
Bonus reward for each extra kg.
If you had read the article you wouldn’t need to guess.
You mean like the Nepalese government did?
The rich would never go near a municipal dump, much less climb a literal mountain of garbage… Unless it’s located in the highest point in the world, then they’d happily pay for the privilege.
Wow, never been within many thousands of miles of Everest, but I’m quite frankly shocked by that “50 tonnes” estimate. Yikes!
I wonder at what altitude this is, like is it piled up near a bunch of camps towards the base, or higher up?
I always pictured it more akin to a much more vertical Antarctica or something.
That’s really sad. :(
Aren’t there a bunch of dead people up there too?
There are. Of the 344 people who have died attempting the summit, at least 200 are still up there. You’re literally in the process of slowly dying above the 8000 meter mark, which is why it’s always deemed too dangerous to try and retrieve them.
That’s only 850m shy of the summit tho. How many people make it to 8km and can’t make the last ~10%?
A lot. The weather on Everest can turn on a dime, and if you don’t turn around and start back at the first sign of inclement weather, it can blow up in an instant and murder you.
Tons of summit attempts end with having to be abandoned just short of the finish.
I reckon about 344.
344 plus a lot more who turn around and don’t die.
