Nobody knows exactly why, but thousands of composting buckets in D.C., where people throw their food scraps, have gone missing. It has forced the D.C. Department of Public Works to switch things up.

From when the pilot program started in August 2023 through the end of 2024, more than 4,000 of the five-gallon compost buckets were stolen from outside people’s homes. In all, 9,000 households received those buckets.

“They can serve many uses. I suppose we’ve actually spotted a few people on ring cams actually taking them,” John Johnson, with D.C.’s Office of Waste Diversion, told WTOP in December. “I think it’s actually a contractor that stopped by and picked it up.”

Rachel Manning, the project lead for the food waste collection, agreed with Johnson.

“We don’t have a lot of proof of who is stealing them, unfortunately, but we can make assumptions that it’s probably contractors,” Manning said.

The food waste collection pilot program has now switched up its composting buckets. The program is shifting to bright orange buckets that resemble a miniaturized version of the trash cans that are outside houses.

The city has handed out about 500 of those to people who have had their buckets stolen or for people who have newly joined the composting pilot program.

Earlier this year, the D.C. Department of Public Works installed 30 “smart bins” for composting across the city.