Everest Trash

Everest Trash: A local story with global implications

Since 2011, Martin Edström has documented how Everest’s tourism boom is reshaping the Khumbu valley, working across stills, reportage, 360-video and immersive exhibits.

Up close, it’s the price of fame: tons of trash, a strained local culture, and a fragile ecology buckling under millions of visitors. From Martin’s stills to a 360-video for National Geographic and now films and immersive exhibits at the Sagarmatha Next experience center, the work has been used worldwide to illustrate what’s happening on the world’s highest mountain.

Sagarmatha Next film, voiced by Conrad Anker

Released in spring 2023, the Sagarmatha Next introduction film is narrated by climber Conrad Anker and centers Sherpa voices in describing the waste challenge and the Carry Me Back response. Directed by Martin Edström and produced by IVAR Studios, the film has since been nominated for over 20 awards and won more than ten. Read the introduction-film case study.

Sagarmatha Next

Together with IVAR Studios, Martin has been working with the Nepalese organization Sagarmatha Next to turn the waste story into something visitors can act on. The Sagarmatha Next experience center sits at Syangboche, on the ridge above Namche Bazaar at 3,775 metres along the main trail to Mount Everest. Since opening, the center has educated more than 15,000 visitors, and through its Carry Me Back volunteer program — where trekkers carry 1 kg of pre-sorted waste back down to Lukla — over 6,000 participants have helped move more than 10,000 kg of trash out of the high Khumbu.

Composite from Martin Edström's documentation of waste in the Khumbu valley.

Martin and IVAR Studios produced the storytelling layer of the center: an introduction film, a set of VR experiences taking visitors to the high peaks, and a physical interactive digital exhibition. Read the experience-center case study for the full breakdown.

National Geographic VR story

Published in 2019, Martin captured a 360-video story called “Clearing Everest’s Trash” that was published as part of National Geographic’s VR platform. It offers a good introduction to the problem this region is facing, featuring the SPCC (Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee) being heard as the major voice.

Exploring the issue on a visual level, this short piece helps put a point on the problem — and leading into the thoughts of what needs to come if we are to change this narrative into a successful example of sustainable tourism.

Background of Sagarmatha National Park

Monks in Sagarmatha National Park during the winter season. — The monks stay in Sagarmatha Park throughout the winter, even when tourists and many locals move down the valley and to Kathmandu.

The Everest region, the Khumbu valley and Sagarmatha National Park used to be a remote wilderness. It still is, and would still be. But for a mountain named Mt Everest.

The Himalayan wilderness beneath Sagarmatha (the Nepali word for Mount Everest) remained largely untouched for centuries, home to no one but a few monks settling here a few centuries ago.

From Martin Edström's documentation of life in the Khumbu valley.

The Khumbu valley in transition

Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s famous first ascent of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, the region has attracted an ever-increasing flow of visitors — climbers and travelers alike.

From the Khumbu valley along the trail to Mount Everest. — The Basecamp of Mount Everest is a top destination for globetrotting travelers. Most people just come up here for a few hours, and then start their trek down again. Throughout the course of a few months every year, during Everest climbing season, Everest basecamp becomes the largest settlement in the region.

The Basecamp of Mount Everest is a top destination for globetrotting travelers. Most people just come up here for a few hours, and then start their trek down again. Throughout the course of a few months every year, during Everest climbing season, Everest basecamp becomes the largest settlement in the region.

Adding it all up, almost a hundred thousand people trek through this fragile ecosystem every single year.

Every year over 50 000 visitors come to trek through the region, most of them heading for Mount Everest. Every visitor brings an additional 1-2 people such as porters and guides.

The enormous growth in visitors has brought great strains on the natural environment and produced mountains of rubbish — from base camp and the high ‘death zone’ all the way down to the villages and communities that were here long before the climbing industry.

Everest Trash — discarded rubbish in the Khumbu valley.

The Everest trash problem

The question is: How did a Himalayan Shangri-La turn into the highest wastedump in the world?

In Sherpa villages along the trekking routes there has never been a sustainable waste disposal system in place. As the tourism business of today leaves 50 tons of waste behind every season, year after year, the consequences have been an eyesore and a threat to the fragile environment.

From Martin Edström's documentation of waste in the Khumbu valley.

Talking about the past, the oldest monks and villagers in the Khumbu valley see a big difference from before tourism was a factor.

We almost never had a problem with waste. What waste we produced washed away with snow and rain. The waste of today — metal tins, paper and plastic — can’t be taken away just by snow or rain.

— Rimpuche Nawang Tenzing Sangbu, Lama in the monastery of Tengboche

Living proof of how fast change can come, the head lama of Tengboche monastery gives insight on how conditions can change radically within a lifetime.

View toward the Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse massif from a Khumbu ridge with a forested village clinging to the slope below.

A Tibetan Buddhist monk in a yellow ceremonial hat blows a long carved conch shell during a ceremony in the Khumbu valley.

Tengboche monastery sits high on a forested ridge above the Khumbu valley, the gorge of the Dudh Kosi river dropping away beside it.

The head lama of Tengboche monastery sits in a pink window-walled receiving room with a view onto snow-capped Himalayan peaks beyond.

A pile of plastic bottles and packaging litters the rocks of an alpine creek with the snow face of Lhotse rising behind.

Trekkers eat lunch on the patio of a Khumbu teahouse with the sharp peak of Ama Dablam visible across the valley.

A porter carrying a heavy load walks past a long mani-stone wall carved with Buddhist mantras on the trail to Mt Everest.

Yellow expedition tents pitched on the moraine and ice of Everest Base Camp, with snowy peaks rising behind.

Travellers sit in an airport bus on the Kathmandu apron looking out at the small twin-prop planes that fly to Lukla.

Looking down on the cargo and passenger area of Tribhuvan Airport in Kathmandu, palettes of supplies stacked for flights up to the mountains.

Aerial view of Namche Bazaar, the gateway town to the Mt Everest region, clinging to a steep Khumbu hillside under low cloud.

A long line of trekkers walks single-file along a sandy trail high on the Khumbu plateau, snow peaks rising ahead.

A vinyl banner above a Sherpa shop in Namche Bazaar advertises Lavazza coffee at the Everest Bakery.

Empty blue and yellow plastic jerry cans and red gas cylinders piled in a Khumbu yard, with mountains rising behind the village.

Two Sherpa porters carry tall bamboo baskets and long wooden poles up steep stone steps in a Khumbu village.

A Coca-Cola bottle and other plastic packaging caught among rocks in a rushing alpine stream in the Khumbu.

A young Nepali woman crouches at a public concrete water tap to fill a container from pipes set into a stone wall.

Two Sherpas in a smoky Khumbu kitchen — one standing with a yellow mug, the other crouched at a wood stove preparing food.

A red supply helicopter on a stone helipad above Namche Bazaar, men in jackets watching as orange crates are unloaded.

Cases of plastic-wrapped Coca-Cola, bottled water and other drinks stacked beside boxes of fruit on a Namche shop wall.

White plastic jerry cans of fuel and cardboard boxes of imported apples wait beside the Lukla airstrip, a helicopter approaching across the mountains.

A young Sherpa porter stands on the trail with an enormous load of cardboard supplies on his back, supported by a tumpline across his forehead.

A fenced-in waste sorting dump above Namche Bazaar packed with plastic bottles and cans, gathered for haul-out by the SPCC.

Two waste workers in masks sort heaps of crushed foil packets and snack wrappers at a Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee facility.

Two Sherpa women carry large sacks of household waste along a path above Namche Bazaar, masks pulled over their faces.

Two pale horses forage for food among plastic litter on a Khumbu hillside, snow-capped Lhotse rising in the background.

A photo essay from over a decade of documenting the waste challenges around Mt Everest.

The Saving Mount Everest Project

In 2011 through 2014, Martin was the official photographer for the EcoHimal project Saving Mount Everest. This resulted in a range of stories about the problem in the Khumbu valley of Nepal, as well as a long-term exhibition at the International Mountain Museum in Pokhara, Nepal.