How to delete orphened public folders

Exchange 2010 SP3

We do not have any public folder databases. (we may have had them on previous versions of Exch, before I arrived at the company) By running get-recipient I see that I have about 40 objects with a Type of "PublicFolder". If I run try to run remove-publicfolder I get the following error:

"Couldn't find an available public folder database. Make sure that there is a public folder database on at least one server that has the Mailbox server role installed, and that the public folder database is mounted.
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [], TaskInvalidOperationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : F54B14DF"

Any idea how to get rid of these objects?