- China has decided to build an eco-friendly toilet up the north slope of Mount Everest during this climbing season.
- The toilet will be equipped with a barrel fitted with rubbish bags underneath which will make it easier to collect human waste.The waste will then be collected and brought down the mountain.
- This decision was taken due to decades of commercial mountaineering have turned Mount Everest into the world’s highest rubbish dump as (a)Fluorescent tents (b)discarded climbing equipment (c)empty gas canisters and (d)human excrement pollute the well-trodden route of Mount Everest.
- The waste from the base camp will be taken away daily and will be provided to local farmers to use it as fertiliser.The temporary toilets will also be removed at the end of the climbing season.
- Earlier,China had banned non-climbers from accessing the Mount Everest base camp in Tibet in an attempt to clean up its side of the mountain.
- Mount Everest known in Nepal as Sagarmatha and in Tibetan as Chomolungma is Earth’s highest mountain above sea level.It is located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas.The international border between Nepal and China(Tibet Autonomous Region) runs across its summit point.
