With just one month to go until World Environment Day on 5 June, which will focus on solutions to plastic pollution, we look back at how a mountain advocate raised the alarm on the tide of waste inundating fragile ecosystems.
Nepalese mountaineer Nirmal Purja has spent years scaling the world’s highest peaks. During a seven-month stretch in 2019, he climbed all 14 of the world’s 8000m-plus mountains. The fastest anyone had ever accomplished the feat.
But during a 2021 visit to Nepal’s Mount Manaslu, the world’s eighth-highest mountain, Purja wasn’t going for the summit. He was there to clean up piles of rubbish, including ropes and oxygen canisters, left behind by other climbers.
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/plastic-pollution-piles-mountain-tourism-reaches-crossroads