Connecticut's Nip Surcharge Funds Green Projects

0:00It's March 24th. This is Hartford News today, AI-powered stories from your city. And Connecticut consumers pay a five-cent surcharge on every bottle of alcohol 50 milliliters or smaller, the tiny ones known as nips that hold a single shot. The program kicked off in late 2021 and is pulled in over $12 million statewide since 2022 with nearly 5 million more from 2024 to 2025. Some money goes straight to the towns where the bottles sell, helping cover local environmental costs. Revenue varies widely by town size and liquor store numbers from a few hundred dollars every six months in small spots to over 100,000 and bigger ones. New Haven led with $242,000 in the latest period, followed by Hartford at $181,000. Towns use it for things like recycling staff, street sweepers to grab toss bottles, or even earth day events. Nips and lawmakers worry about the litter problem, with empty nips cluttering roads, rivers, and

1:03even long island sound, with a rank among. The top trash items, critics say the bottles encourage quick drinking and tossing, worsening pollution in community eye sores, and some push to link funds to anti-drunk. Driving efforts, advocates want towns to ban nips outright, or add them to the state's bottle redemption program where buyers pay ten cents extra but get it back on. Currents, unlike this surcharge, bills for local bans or redemptions have popped up in past sessions, but none filed this year so far, though one group eyes tacking on changes to A. Fraud fighting bottle bill now in play. Industry groups and store owners push back, calling bans a risky step into alcohol rules and noting law sales revenue. For now, the nickel pernip keeps flowing to green projects amid the ongoing tug of war over these mini-bottles.