By Cindy Hoffman, Staff Reporter

(March 2, 2023) Ocean Pines will no longer use the leaf vacuum truck to remove leaves from the ditches in neighborhoods in the next fiscal year, obligating residents to remove the leaves from the ditches and bag them with the rest of their yard waste for pickup.

Ocean Pines will continue to send crews out twice a week to pick up bagged leaves from Thanksgiving to Christmas on opposite days to trash hauler Republic’s collection days.

The Environment and Natural Assets Committee is suggesting to Ocean Pines management that it increase the hours and times for homeowners to drop off their yard waste at Public Works; that Ocean Pines ID cards be used for proof of residency rather than stickers; and to stop the commercial trucks from using the yard.

 “We also would like to encourage residents to use paper bags for yard waste rather than plastic bags,” said Sharon Santacroce, the chair of the Environment and Natural Assets Committee. “Paper bags are environmentally friendly as opposed to plastic that takes forever to degrade.”

Paper bags can be found at local hardware stores in the area.

According to The World Counts, most plastic bags are made from Polyethylene, which takes centuries to degrade. In total, humans use 100 million tons of plastic every year. Some 10 percent of this plastic ends up in the oceans. An estimated 300 million plastic bags every year end up in the Atlantic Ocean alone.