Earlier in May, the Communist leadership limited the climbing season, convincing the Nepali government to shut down the southern approach to the 29,035 feet peak so that the Beijing Olympic torch relay was not disrupted by anti-Chinese protestors.

Now weeks after the Olympic torch relay across the world's highest peak, called Mount Qomolangma by the Chinese, Beijing plans to send special teams to clear the mounds of discarded tins, cans, bottles, oxygen canisters, rucksacks and even the occasional corpse of a climber.

"We have a responsibility to ensure the water source of the river flowing from Everest to the sea is clean," Zhang Yongze, the leader of the Tibetan environmental protection agency was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

"Our target is to keep people from abusing Mount Everest," he stressed.

The campaign planned in the first half of 2009 is to protect the fragile ecology of the Himalayan plateau. It is also aimed at preserving the melting Rongbuk glacier, which has retreated 490 feet at the base of Everest in the past decade, Zhang said.

Thousands of climbers have visited the area since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first scaled the world's highest peak.

In 2007, 40,000 people visited Everest's Chinese northern side, leaving 120 tonnes of rubbish, The Independent newspaper of Britain said.