Starting from April, the capital's sanitation conditions will be inspected, photographed and graded every day and the results released to the public, said officials from the Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration and Environment.

However, Lei Wen, an official from the environmental health department of the commission, said the grading system is more a comparison rather than a test to be passed or failed.

The daily checks will be conducted by a special team of 50 inspectors from the Beijing Solid Waste Administration, which will upload photos and point out the problems on its official website.

Nine railway lines, 18 highways, plus all the rivers and construction sites in the city's 16 districts and counties are to be included in the inspections.

The checklist is divided into six categories and each category has 13 to 21 items. Twenty points will be deducted for every item that fails to meet the required standard.

As there are a total of 100 marks available, five substandard items will result in a final score of zero.

Lei said if the sanitation conditions fail to meet the set standards, not only will the relative department in charge lose points, the districts or counties where the place is located will also lose points.

The scores will be published online every month, with an integrated score every three months.

Although the solid waste administration department has been publishing photos of the city's sanitation conditions on its website since February 2010, the points system is a new development.

Lei said stricter and more detailed assessment criteria have also been introduced, which were drawn up by the Municipal Commission of City Administration and Environment, the Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Municipal Commission of Transport, the Beijing Water Authority, the Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry, and the Beijing Railway Bureau.

However, there has been criticism that despite the stricter criteria and points system there will be no punishments for the offending government departments and the limited number of inspectors.

"How can 50 people be enough to get a complete record of Beijing's daily sanitation condition?" said Feng Yongfeng, founder of the Beijing-based environmental protection organization Da'erwen.

Feng said the public should be invited to join the inspection scheme as sanitation conditions are closely connected with everyone's daily life.

"When it comes to environmental supervision, two fundamental rules have to be followed, one is public participation, the other is a detailed list of measures to handle the problems if any," Feng told METRO.

But Lei said that last year's experience had shown that the main effect of the inspections is simply to help clarify which department should be responsible for any problems.

"Relying on inspections to improve the city's environment is unrealistic," she said. "The key lies in the division of work beforehand, not the supervision afterwards."