FAIRMONT — Karen McKee has been recycling for nearly two decades and also has helped her three daughters with environmental projects as a troop leader of Girl Scouts.

But there are new lessons to be learned when it comes to recycling, she has discovered.

“There was a program out at Pricketts Fort, and I didn’t realize that laundry detergent bottles were recyclable,” said the Fairmont resident. “I never thought about that. There are a lot of things that can be recycled that I didn’t think about prior to that.”

So now in addition to tossing in clear plastic bottles into her family’s recycling bin, which also contains newspaper, cardboard, glass, aluminum and steel cans, McKee also chucks in the empty laundry detergent containers.

Even though today is Earth Day, McKee and other area residents try to live an environmentally friendly lifestyle all year round.

“If we did not recycle, then it would all go to the landfills,” McKee said. “At some point, they will be full. If everything has to go to a landfill, it would take up a lot of land that could be used for something else.”

Not only that, but several items are not safe for landfills and must be disposed of separately from trash. These items include batteries, fluorescent light bulbs and anything else that contains even trace amounts of mercury, as well as electronics items that can be dropped off at locations that break them down and re-use most of the parts.

To celebrate Earth Day as well as the arrival of spring, a variety of activities will be held to help people learn more about recycling as well as to drop off items

For instance, on May 9, the Monongalia County Solid Waste Authority (www.moncoswa.org) will sponsor Household Hazardous Waste Day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Miller Environmental Inc. on Hartman Run Road in Morgantown.

“People can drop off common household items that they shouldn’t throw away,” said Laura Stiller of the Mon County Solid Waste Authority.

In addition to batteries and light bulbs, those items include household chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers.

“We weren’t able to do that every year, but this is the first year that we think we’ll be going with an annual plan,” Stiller said.

Recycling in North Central West Virginia has increased in measurable ways, Stiller said, noting that since she started working at the Mon County Solid Waste Authority at the end of 2003, annual collections have more than doubled, from 2,100 tons in 2003 to an expected 5,000 tons in 2009.

“We will be very surprised if we don’t hit 5,000 tons this year,” she said.

Even though part of the increase is due to widening the area of collections — Marion County’s recyclables have been shipped to the Mon County Solid Waste Authority for more than three years now — Stiller believes more and more people have climbed aboard the recycling bandwagon.

That does not mean her office does not deal with challenges, specifically those posed by the existence of a university in the community.

“We’ve had a long education process with the public,” she said. “We have worked for a really, really long time. First you have to teach people that they’re accountable for the waste they generate. You teach them they have to be signed up for trash collection, which is the law. Then you have to tell them it’s illegal to throw their trash away on the roadside and that they are now allowed to burn it. Then you have to teach them about recycling. It’s a huge, multi-step process and it never ends.”

Still, in a city known for holding the occasional party where beer might be involved, Stiller has seen progress.

“What’s interesting to me is that as West Virginia University has raised their recycling presence, it’s noticeable that there are kids coming into the recycling centers with the backs of their pick-ups filled with glass beer bottles and aluminum cans. That’s a positive sign.”

Cathie Oliveto of the Marion County Solid Waste Authority (http://marioncoswa.googlepages.com) noted that the office has to promote recycling because the county’s landfill has been closed.

“We promote recycling and anti-littering,” Oliveto said. “We work with various groups, such as the DEP and the DNR (the Division of Environmental Protection and the Division of Natural Resources. We help with Tire Amnesty Day and Earth Day.”

Marion County has experienced a huge leap in the amount of items recycled, Oliveto said. Between 2007 and 2008, the tons of items recycled rose by the following amounts: plastics, from 2.80 to 29.20; glass, from 11.03 to 27.25; newspaper and magazines, from 14.73 to 149.86; cardboard, from 9.21 to 65.43; steel cans, from 3.02 to 11.44; and aluminum cans, from 1.67 to 2.11.

Some problems exist, Oliveto noted, including businesses that have been bringing in construction materials to the recycling sites at the Middletown Mall and in Mannington.

“This behavior must stop,” Oliveto said. “These are not the people who are trying to recycle to save the resources and the landfill space. They are just trying to get out of a landfill fee or a garbage bill.”

When businesses do bring these items, Oliveto said, the bins get filled beyond capacity and people leave items on the ground, which ironically makes them litterers, not recyclers.

Like McKee, Tonya Daft of Plum Run does her part not only by recycling but also working with children and other groups to properly dispose of items and also to reuse them when possible.

“Our biggest thing is gathering things we can make crafts out of,” she said. “We also recycle things — plastic jugs and glass and newspaper. All of the newspaper is going to produce mulch for gardening. So it’s not being taken to a recycling center; it’s being recycled and put back into the Earth.”

In fact, Daft and her group — the Buffalo Creek Dream Makers Conservation Club — also plant trees in a variety of locations, including plum trees on Plum Run, the origin of the area’s name. Anyone who wants to contact her for trees can call her at (304) 825-6103.

“Some of the kids start these themselves,” she said. “They learned how to cut them and start rooting them so they can grow trees. And we try to arrange for people to get the trees.”

E-mail Mary Wade Burnside at mwburnside@timeswv.com.