She climbed Mount Everest three times, but she’s accomplished another feat: removing several tons of trash from its Tibetan side. Brut nature met Marion Chaygneaud-Dupuy.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00In 2018, I was told that I broke the record of the first European woman to have climbed the Everest three times.
00:14During my first expedition to the top, I explored the whole area around the advanced base camp and I realized that it was like a discharge.
00:24It's canned food, bokos, toothpaste tubes, tent towels.
00:32In 2018, I was told that I broke the record of the first European woman to have climbed the Everest three times.
00:37During my first expedition to the top, I explored the whole area around the advanced base camp and I realized that it was like a discharge.
00:41During my first expedition to the top, I explored the whole area around the advanced base camp and I realized that it was like a discharge.
00:46At camp 3, we are at 8,300 meters.
00:49So this is really what we call the dead zone.
00:51That is to say that there is no room for life at all.
00:54If we stay in this area for too long, we die.
00:57This is where the waste is left the most abundantly because in the end, there is this urgency to go up or down.
01:03So there is no longer any awareness of respect for this place.
01:10In total, on the six camps to climb to the top of Everest, on the northern side, on the Tibetan side, there are 10 tons of waste.
01:27After four years in the monastery, I went to the other side of the Himalayan chain, to Tibet,
01:39where I became a project manager to help nomadic populations in Tibet.
01:47I didn't expect to end up on the slopes of Everest to go to the top.
01:54I was already a guide since 2011-2012, I had been to the advanced camp on Everest.
02:01It was not at all a goal to go up there.
02:05And then in 2012, the company of the guides, a private company that deals with Chinese expeditions on Everest,
02:15asked me to go to the top to really understand why people leave the waste at this altitude
02:22and why it is so difficult for the mountain professionals who are there to supervise these expeditions
02:28to find a system to bring them back down.
02:41Just before taking these last steps to get to the top, which is of course completely gray,
02:46to see the end of the ascent appear very soon.
02:50It's extremely bright, it's very, very spacious.
02:53And then just below us, there is a sea of summits all around the massif of Everest.
02:59It's absolutely beautiful, each summit has a story, a name, I know them, I'm even sure I've climbed them.
03:20Everest, China
03:28More and more tourists come just to reach the top,
03:32without really taking into account the importance of keeping the mountain clean and pure.
03:40The flow of waste was like a tear that polluted the mountain.
03:44And it was through this same wound in myself that I felt the motivation to take action.
03:53Everest, China
04:11Once the bags have been brought down by the yaks to the base camp,
04:15there are trucks that come to pick up these bags and bring them in the different discharges
04:19for recyclable waste and non-recyclable waste.
04:24All this infrastructure, this coordination, it motivated the troops,
04:28which meant that there were not only the mountain professionals who were there to mobilize to pick up the waste,
04:33but there were also all the mountaineers from the different expeditions from the different countries.
04:41A major challenge to overcome was the collection of waste at very high altitudes.
04:48As there were only the mountain professionals, the Sherpas, the Tibetans or the Nepalese,
04:52who could go and collect this waste,
04:54we felt that it was essential to pay for this work.
04:59So we set up a program called Cash for Trash,
05:03where every kilo of trash is paid in local currency.
05:18Everest, China
05:26We had to start by making a chart of principles based on the Tibetan ecological consciousness,
05:34which was already there.
05:35We had to set up an infrastructure with deposit areas of different waste,
05:41recyclable and non-recyclable,
05:42so that continuously, when the expeditions come,
05:45they can deposit their bags of waste as they produce them.
05:50So we count the number of waste that has been reduced by the expedition.
05:54Each mountaineer must reduce at least 8 kilos of waste.
05:58And if the travel agencies do not play the game of reducing their waste,
06:03they are simply stripped of the list of agencies for the following year.
06:09It looks really beautiful.
06:10Yeah.
06:13For me, it was also getting out of isolation.
06:16I thought that the spiritual path led me to stay alone,
06:20in retirement, in caves, or even in my tent on the mountain.
06:24But in the end, this idea of being isolated is really dissolved.
06:28And it is dissolved in a much broader consciousness
06:31of being interdependent with everything that surrounds me.
06:34Thank you for being the actors in my movie.
06:43THE ECHOLABEL
06:51Today, I am bringing down this echolabel, Clean Everest,
06:55to all the plains of Tibet,
06:57not only to clean the glaciers,
07:00but also to keep the water sources in the plain clean.
07:05THE ECHOLABEL
07:10In Tibetan, the Everest is called Jomolangma.
07:13Jomolangma is the goddess mother elephant,
07:15who protects the world and protects humans and animals.
07:20Those who live as mountain guides
07:22have a salary thanks to Jomolangma.
07:26It's like this breathing between receiving from the mountain
07:30and giving in exchange.
07:32Giving what?
07:33Giving back its purity, its beauty.
07:36That's what this sacred relationship with the mountain is about.
07:39It's about understanding that there are always balances to be respected.
07:42You can't take everything,
07:43you have to give back at some point to take care of it again.
07:47THE ECHOLABEL