LUKLA, Nepal — Last weekend, a group of Sherpas gathered outside Buddha Lodge in this speck of a town near Mount Everest, stuffing cloth sacks filled with thousands of pounds of garbage into a turboprop plane.

As the number of trekkers and mountaineers winding through the Everest region has multiplied, so too has the trash — empty bottles of Tuborg beer, food cans, torn tents, empty oxygen bottles. Now, organizers of a national cleanup campaign have set a target of collecting and recycling 200,000 pounds of trash in the area, making it one of Nepal’s most ambitious waste management projects to date.

“Trash has become a major problem,” said Dalamu Sherpa, the chairwoman of a local women’s group, adding that the project was partly about “saving the glory of the Everest region.”

Nepal has taken several steps to reduce garbage in the Khumbu region, which includes Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world. In 2014, the country’s tourism ministry declared that anyone climbing the mountain must return from the trip with an extra 18 pounds of garbage.