Single-use plastic bags and plastic bottles can take over 1000 years to dissolve and recycling is close to impossible in the remote mountainous areas of Nepal. Plastic is hazardous for health and cause pollution that is extremely difficult and expensive to clean up in Nepal’s fragile eco-system. As an example, a kilo of garbage collected from Clean Everest Campaign cost 95 dollars per kilo.

The ban is possible : it has been done in other Himalayan regions (Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan) and locally, since 12 years, on the Chomrung – Annapurna Sanctuary trekking route by a local association initiative.

Preserving Nepal pristine nature, promoting sustainable tourism for long term income for local communities and enhancing Nepal’s image abroad are the main objectives of this civil society initiative

Visitors to Nepal should be informed of the ban and advised to bring purifying pills and water containers. All lodges on the trekking route should be required to install tab water filters and the selling of filtered water will compensate for the lost mineral water bottles. Locally made solar heaters are widely used in mountain areas of Nepal to boil water for free. And today light personal UV purifiers are also available. So alternatives to single-use mineral water plastic bottles (which are used mostly by tourists and not by local communities) exist. Lodges or local shops equipped with a filter can sell filtered water for the same but clean income.

We request all friends of Nepal, trekkers and trekking agencies, National Parks, environmentalists and tourist sector activists to promote and to support this initiative to make sure that Nepal government implement swiftly the ban before it’s too late.

Let’s DECLARE NEPAL HIMALAYA A PLASTIC BAGS & BOTTLES FREE ZONE in order to preserve Nepal unique but fragile environment.