3,600 kg waste collected from Annapurna

Kathmandu: As many as 3,600 kilograms of solid waste have been collected from Myagdi-based Annapurna First Mountain.

As part of the clean mountain campaign spearheaded by the Nepal Army, the waste was taken out from Mount Annapurna and its base camp. The 8,071-meter-high Mount Annapurna lies in Annapurna Rural Municipality-4, Narchyang of Myagdi.

Chief Administrative Officer of Annapurna Rural Municipality, Amrit Subedi informed the NA’s mountain cleaning team had started cleaning up the Mount Annapurna last April 10 and returned on May 9.

A team comprising 10 NA personnel and 13 from Peak Promotion Travel Agency collected wastes in the mountain and the base camp for 48 days. NA mayor Gajendra Deuba led the clean-up campaign.

The team with Captain Bhim Bahadur Bhujel had reached the 8,091 meter-high Annapurna peak and collected garbage there. The waste collected includes 1,200 kg of biodegradable and 2,400 kg of non-biodegradable, the team shared.

The biodegradable waste has been managed at Bhusaket in the presence of the representatives of the Annapurna Youth Club in Narchyang. The non-biodegradable waste was taken to Dana of Myagdi via a helicopter belonging to Prabhu Air.

The waste airlifted to Dana from the Annapurna Base Camp was then sent to Kathmandu-based NA headquarters in a truck, shared by Indra Singh Sherchan, a local of Dana. The 2,400 kg waste including plastic, tin, iron, and lead was sent to Kathmandu.

Clean-up was done in the Annapurna Mountain and its base camp after 72 years since mountaineering was permitted, said the Chairperson of Village Conservation Area Management Committee, Narchyang, Tej Gurung.

‘The waste was increasingly piling up in the mountain and base camp with the rise in the number of mountaineers and trekkers’, he said, adding, ‘The NA team cleaned up the Annapurna mountain for the first time’. Pokhara metropolis had aided Rs 1.5 million to the NA for the clean mountain campaign. NA has conducted the ‘Clean Mountain Campaign-2023’ in Mount Annapurna, Sagarmatha, Lhotse, and Barunche Peaks.

The 8,000-meter-high Dhawalagiri and Manaslu mountains located in Gandaki province were cleaned earlier. The NA has placed the campaign realizing the waste dumped in the mountain caused environmental imbalance and imparted a wrong message.

The NA that started the campaign in 2019 extracted 7,157 kilograms of biodegradable waste from Mount Everest, Lhotse, Manaslu, and Kanchenjunga peaks last year (RSS).