Sales Of 'Nips' Top 560K In Shelton & Derby, Two Cities Receive $28K

SHELTON & DERBY, CT — Nips bottles are omnipresent. You can find the tiny liquor bottles on the side of the road, along city streets, peppered along trails, in parks and fields. They are everywhere.

Last fall, the state passed a law that required a five-cent surcharge on every nip sold, a regulation championed by Democratic state Sen. Christine Cohen (12th District), chair of the Senate Environmental Committee. Cohen said the law, and its outcome, represent a "big step forward in reducing litter and ensuring bottles and cans are properly recycled."

The surcharge, which went into effect on Oct. 1, 2021, is passed on to the retailer and then the consumer by alcohol wholesalers. And they in turn hand that money over to towns to mitigate the environmental, and aesthetic, havoc wreaked by the little bottles.

In Shelton, 332,506 nips were sold during the past six months (Oct. 1 through March 31), which generated $16,625 for the city, according to the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection.

As for Derby, 230,800 nips were sold during the same period, which brought in $11,540, state officials said. Patch received a copy of the report that delineates the number of nips sold in a community, and how much money each of the state's 169 municipalities will receive.

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The law requires that each town use the money for environmental measures intended to reduce litter from improperly discarded nips bottles and the generated solid waste.

Suggestions include hiring a recycling coordinator, installing storm drain filters designed to block solid waste and beverage container debris, buying a mechanical street sweeper, vacuum or broom that removes litter, and the like.

— Ellyn Santiago, Patch Staff, contributed to this report.