Beijing: Climbers with pressing needs on Mount Everest will soon find an “eco-friendly” toilet at a Chinese campsite 7,028 metres (23,058 feet) above sea level in an ongoing campaign to deal with the peak’s waste problem. Decades of commercial mountaineering have turned Everest into the world’s highest rubbish dump as an increasing number of big-spending mountaineers pay little attention to the ugly footprint they leave behind.
Fluorescent tents, discarded climbing equipment, empty gas canisters and human excrement pollute the well-trodden route to the summit of the 8,848-metre peak. During the season this spring, a Chinese company will add what state media dubbed an “eco-friendly” loo at the higher campsite on the northern slope in Tibet. “The toilet makes it easy to collect human waste produced by the climbers as there is a barrel with rubbish bags underneath the toilet,” Xinhua quoted Pema Tinley, deputy secy general of the Tibet Mountaineering Association, as saying. The waste will be collected and brought down the mountain.
