Greg Jenner

Your Debt To Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4.

The intimidation effect isn't that strong for us.

This isn't something new.

They threaten all the time.

China threatens any country it sees as a threat.

Hello, Greg Jenner here, host of You're Dead to Me.

So this Christmas, give your ears a treat with Dead Funny History.

You can find it in the You're Dead to Me feed on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

So what it required climbers to do was pay this deposit money, $4,000, before they embarked on this expedition.

And then if they brought back at least eight cages of trash, then they would get that.

That was the idea.

So when I spoke to these officials, all of them were saying that, you know, most of the money was refunded, meaning they got the clearance letter, they brought the trash back.

So why is then still the trash is piling up on Everest?

What they tell me is climbers tend to bring back only trash from the lower camps, not the higher camps.

The higher camps, you know, that's where the real issue is.

And the checkpoint is just above the base camp, meaning only lower camps were cleared, higher camps still a big deal.

And that's why they thought that they should scrap it altogether.

So what they're saying now is, you know, they are introducing a fee, which is a non-refundable fee compulsory to be paid.

It won't be returned.

But then the Sherpas, the Sherpa community in particular, they're happy because what they said was to keep the mountain clean and to monitor if this is happening or not.