Environmental fee to help clean up trash on world’s highest peak   

西藏将向珠峰登山者收环保费 每人100至200美元

File photo shows the scenery on the Mount Qomolangma, Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. (Photo/Xinhua)

(ECNS) - China's Tibet autonomous region plans to charge climbers of Mount Qomolangma, also known as Mount Everest, an environmental fee of US$100-200 starting this year, in a bid to remove trash from the world's highest mountain.

Zhang Mingxing, the director of Tibet's mountaineering administration center, says his organization and the Mount Qomolangma Nature Reserve jointly launched a cleanup of the mountain last year and will continue the campaign in the long run.

He also says that both Nepal and China's Tibet have stepped up efforts to clean up trash on the mountain. In recent years, the two countries have regularly exchanged ideas and shared environmental protection measures in this regard, he says.

The Nepali mountaineering season began this week, British newspaper The Guardian has reported, and there is much human excrement along the pathway to the mountain, which not only harms the local environment, but is also likely to spread disease.

So far, more than 4,000 international climbers have successfully reached the summit of Mount Qomolangma. In 2014, more than 180 climbers made the attempt and 120 of them succeeded.

Tibet will kick off its 2015 spring mountaineering season this April.