OUTER PLANET 54 PETplanet Insider Vol. 25 No. 03/24 www.petpla.net OUTER PLANET From the Himalayas During the trekking season, around one ton of waste is left each day in the Everest region. Nepalese non-profit project Sagarmatha Next and award-winning Dutch design firm Super Local announced the launch of the ‘Carry me back’ programme and the ‘From the Himalayas’ product collection. These initiatives offer sustainable solutions to remove, process, and transform waste from the Everest region. The majestic beauty of Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal, home of Mount Everest, draws over 80,000 visitors annually, offering tourists an unforgettable experience in nature. While this has brought considerable socio-economic benefits to the area, it has also resulted in tragic amounts of waste and pressure on the region’s delicate ecosystem during the last few decades. To address these environmental challenges, the Sagarmatha Next centre was built on the way to Everest Base Camp at an altitude of 3,775m. Sagarmatha Next aims to change the perception around “waste” by showcasing innovative solutions for solid waste management and demonstrating to locals and tourists alike that properly treated waste has value. Sagarmatha Next houses a visitor centre, art gallery, waste lab, recycled product shop, and cafe in its centre. ‘Carry me back’ programme During the trekking season, approximately one ton of waste is left each day in the Everest region. The high altitude, lack of connectivity, and limited recycling infrastructure make it challenging to remove waste, resulting in more than 80 open pits in the region in which waste is burned - contaminating the soil, water, and air and threatening biodiversity. Sagarmatha Next and Super Local partnered with a local waste management organisation to develop the ‘Carry me back’ programme. It is a crowdsourced waste removal system that harnesses the movement of locals and tourists from the mountains to lower regions where transported waste can be recycled. Waste is collected from the open pits, restaurants, lodges, and hiking trail waste bins. At the processing facility, waste is sorted, shredded, and packed in one kilo bags designed by Super Local. The filled bags are then offered to locals and visitors at a pickup station. The ‘Carry me back’ pouches are easily clipped onto backpacks and transported via the trail to the regional airport. Dedicated bins are available at the airport for the bags to be transferred by local private airlines to Kathmandu, where a partner facility recycles the waste. Locals and visitors alike have responded enthusiastically to the programme, with some people carrying up to 14 kg of waste on their way. Waste to product Once waste is transported via the ‘Carry me back’ programme to Kathmandu, it is further processed. While some materials, like water bottles and aluminium cans, are processed on a more industrial scale, for the processing of HDPE water bottle caps, Super Local was tasked with converting this waste material into unique products that tourists can buy, thus averting waste and financing Sagarmatha Next’s important work. Super Local developed an end-toend process including setting up an appropriate plastics workspace, building two hand-operated plastic injection machines utilising the open-source blueprints of Precious Plastic, and training the local staff through handson support during the first weeks of production. Super Local and Sagarmatha Next collaborated on the design concept, with Super Local developing the final designs and plastic moulds. The final output is the ‘From the Himalayas’ product collection, which consists of three different pebbleshaped plastic stones and a scale model of the Himalayas’ most iconic peaks. These colourful products use thousands of recycled bottle caps and are perfect items for tourists to remember their adventure, and hopefully their responsibility to the environment, even long after they have returned home. www.super-local.com www.sagarmathanext.com ‘Carry me back’ pouch filled with PET bottle caps Mould with Himalaya scale model Manual removal of labels and caps
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