Three tons of garbage were collected from Mount Everest during the first two weeks of a clean-up task assigned to a 14-member team after the Earth's highest mountain had been heavily polluted by climbers.

The collected rubbish includes discarded climbing equipment, empty gas canisters, plastic bottles, and others.

"The clean-up campaign team has just started and members have ascended to higher camps to collect more garbage," chief of Nepal's tourism department, Dandu Raj Ghimire, said.

Waste was transferred to Kathmandu for recycling, while the remaining biodegradable trash was taken to the neighboring Okhaldhunga district for proper disposal.

"The clean-up campaign will be continued in the coming seasons as well to make the world's tallest mountain clean. It is our responsibility to keep our mountains clean," Ghimire stated.

Over the past six years ago, Nepal has been enforcing a $4,000 rubbish deposit per team that would be refunded if each climber brought down at least eight kilos of waste; only half of the climbers return with their trash.