Welcome to Mount Everest, the high-altitude rubbish dump.
It would seem decades of commercial mountaineering has turned Everest into the world's highest dumping ground for trash as climbers pay no heed to the ugly footprint they leave in their wake.
Thanks a lot, humans.
Our species has had an observably detrimental effect on this planet as we've been polluting and destroying environments for years.
Plastic has been found deep in the murky depths of the Mariana Trench and now it stretches to the dizzying heights of Mount Everest.
Pemba Dorje Sherpa, who has climbed Everest 18 times, told AFP: "It is disgusting, an eyesore. The mountain is carrying tonnes of waste."
The first people to reach the summit 65 years ago in 1953 were Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and, since then, it's estimated that more than 4,000 people have climbed the towering mountain.
That number of people traversing it is only increasing and this influx has escalated the pollution on the mountain.
To combat this travesty, the Nepalese government implemented a $4,000 rubbish deposit per climbing team that would be refunded if each mountaineer brought down at least eight kilograms (18 pounds) of waste.
In 2017, climbers brought down nearly 25 tonnes of trash and 15 tonnes of human waste, which is the equivalent of three double-decker buses, according to the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC).
The SPCC has been working to clean Mount Everest for the last 25 years and they have established several measures targeting rubbish left behind and human waste.
They hope to send a 100 tonnes of materials to be recycled in 2018.
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Mount Everest
Height: 29,035 feet (8,850 meters)
Location: Nepal/Tibet
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| Afegeix la llegenda |
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K2/Godwin Austen
Height: 28,250 feet (8,611 meters)
Location: Pakistan/China
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Kangchenjunga
Height: 28,169 feet (8,586 meters)
Location: India/Nepal
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Lhotse
Height: 27,940 feet (8,516 meters)
Location: Nepal/Tibet
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Makalu
Height: 27,766 feet (8,463 meters)
Location: Nepal/Tibet
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Cho Oyu
Height: 26,906 feet (8,201 meters)
Location: Nepal/Tibet
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Dhaulagiri I
Height: 26,795 feet (8,167 meters)
Location: Nepal
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Manaslu I
Height: 26,781 feet (8,163 meters)
Location: Nepal
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Nanga Parbat
Height: 26,660 feet (8,125 meters)
Location: Pakistan
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Annapurna I
Height: 26,545 feet (8,091 meters)
Location: Nepal
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