Volunteers clean up Everest

Tibetan mountaineers and a team of volunteers have begun a six-week clean up of Mount Everest, where tons of rubbish has been dumped by expeditions, state media said Monday.

The team is scaling the world's highest peak from the Chinese side and will spend until World Environment Day in early June collecting garbage, Xinhua news agency reported.

The clean-up campaigns will take place annually until 2008, when the Beijing Olympic torch relay will be taken to the mountain.

In the first stage of the project last year, a Tibetan team and 24 volunteers removed eight tons of trash left between 5 120 to 6 500m above sea level.

It is estimated that there is a staggering 615 tons of waste on the 8 848m-high mountain left by past expeditions.

Since 1953, hundreds of mountaineers have conquered Everest, leaving behind tents, food bags and oxygen cylinders.

Beijing Olympic organisers are planning for the Olympic torch to be taken up the southern side of Everest before being carried down along the northern slope, some time in 2008.