Plastic lawn chairs, buckets, toys, flower pots, storage containers and even your old, dinged-up recycling bin will now be accepted for recycling.

"Every day, we talk to residents who say 'Can we recycle this? And can we recycle that?'" Rich Bowen, the county solid waste recycling manager, said Friday. "Up until today, we'd have to say 'No.' ... I've used the word 'excited' a lot today. And it's true. I am excited."

The company that buys Anne Arundel's recyclables previously rejected those hard plastics, plus plastic shopping bags, aluminum foil and aluminum pans, because there wasn't a market to resell those recycled goods.

Lots of residents were still slipping unaccepted items into recycling bins, leaving the processing center with piles of plastics that could be recycled if anyone wanted to buy them. Eventually, the company found a Canadian buyer, Mr. Bowen said.

"When they're getting this stuff on a regular basis, it behooves them to find a market for it," he said.

Earlier this year, the county began a $250,000 marketing campaign to encourage residents to increase the amount of trash they toss into the recycling bin. Studies showed about half of residents' waste is recyclable, and County Executive John R. Leopold set a goal to have county residents recycle 50 percent of their trash.

"That's the point, to make Anne Arundel County a leader in this region," Mr. Leopold said Friday during an event announcing the program's expansion and winners of the county's first recycling-sculpture contest for middle-school students.

"The land itself is not something that we own," Mr. Leopold said. "It's something that we're a part of, and we need to be stewards in the future."

Anne Arundel earned $1.8 million last year by selling recyclable materials. Meeting Mr. Leopold's "50/50" challenge would add another $1.4 million to county coffers. Since March, the county's recycling rate has increased from 30 percent to 34 percent.

Aside from the environmental benefits of recycling, the effort conserves space in the county landfill in Millersville. That site will be full in 2050, and the county already ships most of the trash picked up curbside to other locations.

The process of finding a new landfill site within the county is expected to be unpopular with neighbors, and an expensive endeavor.

Mr. Bowen said the City of Annapolis "piggybacks" on the county's recycling contract, and city residents will also be able to recycle more items.

During the event Friday at Westfield Annapolis mall, the a panel of judges selected Jillian Furey of Chesapeake Bay Middle School as the winner of the county's first "Recycling in 3-D" sculpture project.

Jillian built a 5-foot-tall snowman made of spray-painted leaves, topped with a top stove pipe hat made of a Chock full o'Nuts coffee canister. She named him Eugene.

The contest was open to all county middle school students. They were tasked with building a sculpture out of two weeks worth of recycling.

Shannon Derksen of Severn River Middle School took second place with her extensive nativity scene created from a hodgepodge of recycled materials. Laura Perrot of Old Mill Middle School South took third place for a window box of snowflakes made of aluminum cans. And Molly Evans of Chesapeake Bay Middle School earned honorable mention for her diorama of a Christmas Tree.

The students' art will be on display at the mall during the holiday season.