Staff photo / R. Michael Semple Ruth Ann Kiepper of Champion unloads her recyclable items at the Tribune Chronicle’s annual Earth Day recycling drive and shredding event Monday morning in the newspaper parking lot.

WARREN — Hundreds of vehicles stretched from the Tribune Chronicle’s parking lot on Vine Avenue toward East Market Street as people scrambled to take part in the newspaper’s document-shredding and recycling day Monday morning.

Throughout the event, Trumbull County residents drove in and dropped off their old documents, books and magazines, taking part in the newspaper’s annual celebration of Earth Day.

Protect-N-Shred Inc. of Cortland provided on-site document shredding services.

Sue Shafer, community events coordinator for the Tribune Chronicle, said 7,500 pounds of documents were shredded during the event. Crews also collected 12,000 pounds worth of books, magazines and newspapers.

Collection numbers increased from last year when the paper received 6,000 pounds of documents and 10,000 pounds of books and other recyclable papers, according to Tribune Chronicle archives.

“It was a lot of people,” Shafer said. “People tell me that they wait for this every year, and they fill up boxes until we do this.”

One of those individuals who said she “waits for the event” every year is Joyce Brothers of Warren. Brothers said the Tribune Chronicle’s recycling and shredding day has become part of her regular cleaning routine and it is her favorite event of this type in the area.

“There’s a lot of stuff I want to have shredded, so I really appreciate that the Tribune provides this for us,” she said.

Another Warren resident, Pam Simpson, called herself a “big recycler” and she said she tries to attend the event every year. This year, Simpson said she used recycling and shredding day to clean up after tax season.

“This year, I’m shredding like 30 years of tax forms. I’m really happy to do it,” she said.

Earth Day began on April 22, 1970, first as a day of education about the environment and then as a national activist movement in which some 20 million Americans — at the time, about 10% of the U.S. population — demonstrated against the negative environmental and health impacts of industrial development, according to earthday.org.

By 1990, Earth Day became a global movement and gave a boost to recycling worldwide. Today, it is estimated more than a billion people in more than 190 countries observe the day each year by recycling, picking up trash and planting trees.