Install public toilets on Mount Everest

An environmental group is asking the Nepal government to consider installing portable toilets on Mount Everest for climbers caught short at the roof of the world.

Eco Himal says the thousands of trekkers who set off from the South Base Camp in Nepal every year would find it easier to keep it clean if there were public toilets.

Activists say Everest is littered with the detritus of past expeditions, including human waste and mountaineers' corpses, which can take decades to decompose because of the extreme cold.

Caught short: An environmental group has called for portable toilets to be installed at Mount Everest's base camp to cut down on waste left on the mountain

Phinjo Sherpa, director of Eco Himal, said: 'Human waste is a problem, of course.

'I am merely suggesting that if we have public toilets they can be used.'

Many group bring expedition toilet cans, but Mr Sherpa said porters were often left with little choice but the nearest snowdrift.

He said installing the toilets would be discussed as part of a wider waste management plan being prepared by the government that would encompass popular peaks throughout the Everest region.

'If there could be two or three toilets that would be good but this is just at the planning phase,' he said.

'We will have to decide what is a good idea and what isn't.'

Cleaning up: The Nepal government requires climbers to remove all the rubbish they create, but it is difficult to monitor

The idea has been rejected by some of Eco Himal's partners within the Nepal-based climbing community.

Wangchhu Sherpa, president of the Everest Summiteers Association, said: 'The ice moves around a lot during the year.

'If you built toilets at the base camp, the ice would shift and the structures would fall down.'

Climbers spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to reach the 29,028ft summit of Everest, but campaigners say few pay much attention to the rubbish they leave behind.

There is no official figure on how much rubbish has been left on the mountain, but the debris of 50 years of climbing has given Everest the name of the world's highest dumpster.

Privately-funded Eco Everest Expedition, a Nepal-based coalition of environmentalists campaigning to keep the mountain clean, has collected more than 10 tons of rubbish, 400 kilos of human waste and four bodies since 2008.

Government officials say trekkers are expected to bring down all their rubbish themselves.

Expeditions currently have to pay a $4,000 deposit, which is refunded once they show they have brought back everything they took on to the mountain.

But the rules are impossible to enforce.

If approved, the toilets could also be installed at other popular peaks in the region, including Pumori, Ama Dablam and Island Peak.

Nepal's Sherpa people, who are Buddhists and believed to be of Tibetan origin, make up most of the population in the Everest region and have long revered the world's highest peak as sacred.

Almost 4,000 people have attempted to climb Mount Everest since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to conquer the world's highest peak in 1953.