Communities can solve ‘nip’ problem

While providing direct incentives to clean up nips bottles is not a new approach, it’s been shown to be highly effective.

Whether strolling along sidewalks in residential neighborhoods, walking the area’s beaches, hiking the trails in state parks and preserves or even just traversing grocery store and shopping mall parking lots, there’s no escaping the proliferation of discarded empty miniature liquor bottles commonly called nips.

In an effort to curb the unsightly mess caused by these tiny bottles, the legislature passed a law placing a 5-cent surcharge on each nip bottle sold. The law went into effect on Oct. 1, 2021, and as municipalities now reap funds produced by the surcharge, officials have proposed a range of ways — from hiring recycling coordinators to partnering with local non-profits on trash cleanup efforts — to attack trash messes within their borders.

East Lyme, for example, will place two solar-powered, cloud-connected trash compactors on Main Street in Niantic.

Each container holds 150 gallons of trash and 50 gallons of recyclables. The two receptacles cost $11,800, less than half of the $26,230 the town has received from the nips tax in the law’s first year in existence.

Among some of these more elaborate and high-tech solutions, however, we believe simple and straightforward proposals are most effective. We like one such proposal made in Montville, for example. The plan is to give civic groups and nonprofit organizations $500 to fill garbage bags with empty nips bottles. (“Montville uses fund to ‘nip’ litter,” March 18).

This commonsense approach directly attacks the problem of empty nip bottles littering roads, parking lots and trails, while also providing much-needed cash to nonprofit groups that regularly struggle to raise funds to pay for their programming. For youth groups, the program would have the added benefit of helping kids earn the community service hours required by many schools and organizations.

While providing direct incentives to clean up nips bottles is not a new approach, it’s been shown to be highly effective. For example, in the town of Thompson, located in the far northeast corner of the state, residents collected 50,000 nips bottles that had been discarded along roadways and in parks after the town offered gift cards valued at 10 cents per nip bottle collected. The campaign called “Nips for Holiday Cheer” was conducted from April to September of 2020, before the state’s nips surcharge took effect.

Municipalities now are reaping hefty financial benefits from the nips surcharge. The tax generated $4.2 million to municipalities across the state in its first full year of existence. Among some of the revenues seen locally, Norwich received $100,195 from the nips tax, while Groton received $76,689 and New London gained $62,212.

The amount of nips bottles sold to produce such revenue is astounding and somewhat alarming — 872,000 in Norwich and 673,000 in Groton in a six-month period, for example. Still, the revenue now being produced by the surcharge is plenty to directly attack the problem of the trash the bottles create.

We urge municipal officials to find ways to use this new tax revenue that best results in cleaner roads, sidewalks and parks. Further, we encourage programs that also promote community-spiritedness and pass funds along to benefit cash-strapped civic organizations.