Mount Everest is the tallest mountain peak in the world standing proudly at 8,848 meters. Approximately, 1,200 people try to make the climb for the summit of Everest every year. Some succeeded in trusting their country flag on the tip, yet many more perished in the pursuit.
Over 200 corpses of ill-fated climbers line the mountain slopes after a failed battle against temperature which is below zero. The altitude sickness and the ever-present threat of frostbite are also present in the climb.
According to The Washington Post published in 2015, it takes roughly 2 months to complete the climb. By then an average alpinist will excrete nearly 60 pounds of faeces. This season, porters who work on Mount Everest carried down 14,000 Kgs of human waste from base camp and other locations. It was dropped into earthen pits on Gorak Shep, a frozen lake bed near a village 17,000-feet above sea level.
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Grayson Schaff, an editor for Outside magazine wrote in a 2012 Washington Post opinion piece: “The peak has become a fecal time bomb, and the mess is gradually sliding back toward base camp.”
Garry Porter a Washington state resident was aware of the situation. He is a retired engineer who got more than 20,000 feet up the mountain in 2003.
“Everest is a lifetime dream for most climbers. You come off of that and you’re still wrapped up in the scenery and nature, and . . . tempering that excitement is the thought that we really made a mess,” Porter told The Washington Post.
He also added that he had a feeling that Everest deserves better than that – and it’s my responsibility because I’m a climber and I can’t walk away saying my crap doesn’t smell.”
His suggestion to stop his environment nightmare is to use a biogas digester to turn mountaineer excrement into something more useful. The machine would produce fertilizer and methane, a renewable biogas that can be used to cook food and light homes.
He got inspired by two different types of machinery, a sewage treatment facility and a gigantic thermos, the machine is created, buried in the ground and surrounded by insulation. On top of that, they will also construct a basic hut that will keep the elements out and keep the temperature above a relatively hot 68 degrees.
For transmitting head into the digester and powerful batteries that will be used for nightmare heating, will be derived from Solar panels.
“If it sounds simple, that’s by design.”
He said, “If the digester is too difficult to operate – or replacement parts have to be shipped across the world – it won’t last. And the goal is to ultimately turn over the device to authorities in Nepal, who will operate it.”
Porter added that his group, the Mount Everest Biogas Project, has already gotten approval from Nepal government to build the digester and the blessing of dozens of climbers who sought to conquer Everest, not sully it.
His group is taking donations from different institutes and individuals and estimates it will cost half a million dollars to install a working digester on Everest.
“I think you need to earn Everest,” he said. “I’ve spent years climbing lesser mountains – getting experience, getting confidence, and you work up to it.
“I owe something. It’s not my mountain. I’m just there. And I should leave it … as clean as I found it.”