Reduce, reuse . . . repurpose!
One Queens politician has some creative ideas on how to make the most of the thousands of composting buckets the city is dumping on New Yorkers — as some of her colleagues in the City Council whine that it needs millions more in taxpayer dollars to fund the program.
“What better way to spend your taxpayer dollars than to put this ugly, disgusting thing on your counter so that you can collect your garbage scraps,” Queens GOP Councilwoman Vickie Paladino railed in a video on X after the city unloaded 150 of the plastic countertop buckets at her office.
“Luckily they have lots of other uses, because nobody is actually going to compost and we all know it,” she wrote. “So if you don’t want a bucket of rotting food garbage on your countertop feel free to use them for the beach or as little beer coolers or whatever.”
The mini pails are to collect food waste in the kitchen before putting it at the curb in yet another designated new bin or taking it for drop-off.
The city dropped off our ‘countertop composting’ pails at my office today.Luckily they have lots of other uses, because nobody is actually going to compost and we all know it.So if you don’t want a bucket of rotting food garbage on your countertop feel free to use them for… pic.twitter.com/A3tfgKKsAJ
— Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) May 8, 2025
“If people want to use them for what they’re meant for, that’s fine,” Paladino told The Post. “But our little composting bins have got 101 uses.”
“My kids will love this for the playground sprinkler!” one mom joked on X.
“I need a few of those for my classroom to store supplies in,” a teacher chimed in.
Constituents lined up down the block to get their pail, Paladino said, some planning to use it for gardening and BBQ tools this summer.
One user on X noted that the cheap-looking buckets looked like they were ordered off the Chinese e-commerce site Temu.
But the buckets, which are emblazoned with the city Department of Sanitation’s composting website, are from the company Orbis, which the city is paying a whopping $9.7 million to provide “waste bins [and] organic collection,” records show.
The same Orbis bins go for about $19 from Home Depot and Amazon, bringing the worth of the 150 dropped off at each of the 51 council members’ offices to an estimated $145,350.
The composting initiative, which aims to reduce waste and cut greenhouse gas emissions, has been slammed by critics as a hassle and a money grab that costs far more than regular recycling.
In its first 10 days of enforcement beginning April 1, DSNY handed out 2,462 fines, which started at $25 and reaped at least $61,550.
The new mandate prompted so much public outrage and confusion that the fines were suspended until next year.
Paladino and her fellow Common Sense Caucus members have argued that it should be voluntary, and introduced a law calling to “remove organic waste from the city’s list of designated recyclable materials.”
“We’ve got so many problems in the city that need money and need attention, and we could certainly spend our money elsewhere than on how we dispose of our garbage,” Paladino said.
Last year, the council forked over $6.25 million in discretionary funds to save community composting, which was threatened by sweeping budget cuts, and is demanding $7 million more to keep the program afloat after it was left out of Mayor Adams’ 2026 executive budget.
The added cash would “stabilize operations, expand outreach, and scale capacity,” the council said in a press release on funding gaps in city Department of Sanitation services Monday.
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