Subject: Mongolian Facebookers lead mass 'three bag' clean-up

Mongolian Facebook users are marking a traditional sports holiday with a campaign to clean up the rivers and open spaces of their country, which have been plagued by fly-tippers and litter-bugs.

The Naadam holiday celebrates the three Mongolian sports of wrestling, archery, and riding, and activists are echoing the number by challenging three people to collect three sacks of rubbish each within three days, post a video online, them nominate three friends to do likewise, the MMinfo website reports. In a reference to last year's international Ice Bucket Challenge, they have dubbed it the Waste Bucket Challenge. Anyone who fails the challenge is asked to give council binmen a gift made in Mongolia worth at least $10 (£6.50) as a forfeit.

Large numbers of young people have risen to the occasion, posting the results on Facebook using the #HogBucketChallenge hashtag - 'hog' being 'rubbish' in Mongolian. The MMinfo post alone has received 50,000 Facebook 'likes'. Some of the nominations have been quite striking - a six-year-old boy called Tengis challenged a presidential aide, a governing party press spokesman and a leading events organizer to do their bit, the Ulaan Baatar Post reports. The grandees complied, posting Facebook photos of their best efforts, thereby setting off a trend for media bosses and MPs and fashion models to goad their rivals into taking to the roadsides and riverbanks, bags in hand.