West Bengal: Swachh Abhiyan initiative by mountaineers to keep Sandakphu garbage-free

TNN, EiSamay, Nov 6, 2018, KOLKATA: The mountains are becoming highly vulnerable with trekkers and tourists leaving behind garbage on the climbing and trekking trails. The Indian Mountaineering Federation has launched a cleaning expedition starting from the world famous Sandakphu-Phalut trail.

Government of India owned ONGC is to provide financial support for this project, which is being led by mountaineer Debraj Dutta starting Tuesday.

Sandakphu-Phalut gets thousands of trekkers and tourists yearly. Trekkers leave behind discarded food cans, plastic packets and every other kind of trash. The Sherpas mostly clean the trash left behind. Sometimes they get help from the trekkers also. The Sagarmatha Pollution Control committee has announced a bonus to encourage the Sherpas to get rid of the waste. Also, it should be mentioned that in 2015, 4,000 kg of waste was collected by a team of Indian Army.

Debraj himself had witnessed the situation in 2016 when he climbed the Mt Everest.

Debraj along with a team will start the journey from Mane Bhanjang on Wednesday. Here, local volunteers will join the team of 16 members. One team will reach Kayakata and will collect waste there. Another will directly go to Phalut. The second team will come down to Kayakata from Phalut. On November 10, they will meet in Siliguri.

Debraj said, "We know that most of the trash can be located in between Mane Bhanjang to Sukhiapokhri. So we will collect the waste and will take it to Siliguri, where the municipality will help us."

They hope this kind of expedition will educate the tourists and the locals about the fragile ecosystem.