Nepal Army mountain cleaning team summits Mt Everest

A 10-member team comprising five Nepal Army personnel and five Sherpas on Monday successfully scaled Mt Everest, the world's highest peak, as part of a campaign to rid four peaks in the Himalayan nation of solid waste, the Nepal Army said on Monday.

The Clean Mountain Campaign-2023, launched by the Nepal Army, aims to gather almost 35,000 kgs of solid waste from four peaks in Nepal: Mt Everest, Mt Lhotse, Mt Baruntse and Mt Annapurna.

The team reached the world's highest peak at 8,849 metres at 10:05 am on Monday, according to the Nepal Army Directorate of Public Relations and Information.

Team leader Lieutenant Kishore Adhikari, Captain Bishnubal Rai, Captain Dipendra Singh Khatri, Lance Corporal Kishore Jabegu and Corporal Shankar Kunwar, and the five sherpas had previously scaled Mt. Annapurna, the tenth-highest peak in the world successfully. The Clean Mountain Campaign 2023 was launched on March 28 by Army Chief General Prabhu Ram Sharma, who handed over the 'Flag of Ceremony' to the team in a function at the Nepal Army headquarters in Bhadrakali, Kathmandu.

It will conclude on June 5, coinciding with World Environment Day, according to the Nepal Army.

The campaign, which began in 2019, but was halted in 2020 due to a coronavirus outbreak, has already led to the collection of 32,311 kilos of waste.

Last year, nearly 34 tonnes of waste were collected from the four mountains in Nepal as part of the cleaning campaign.

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