Connecticut environmental activists have renewed their efforts to ban the sale of “nip” liquor bottles this year. It’s a move that failed to pass in the state legislature in previous years.
Advocates of the ban say more than 132 million of the tiny single-shot liquor bottles are sold in Connecticut each year, and they end up littering parks, beaches and roadsides.
“There’s about 350 nips in this bag right here. My fellow volunteers and I collected these bottles right here in less than an hour on one beach in Connecticut," said Rachel Precious, a former Westport oyster farmer and chair of the Connecticut chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a group involved in the clean-up of beaches.
She was one of several advocates who spoke at a news briefing at the Legislative Office building in Hartford on Wednesday.
Precious said it’s time to ban nips because the current five-cent surcharge on each bottle sold, which goes to towns for environmental cleanup efforts, isn't working.
“We don’t need money to fund more cleanups; we need to stop the litter in the first place by preventing the sale of these bottles,” she said.
Two bills are to be considered by the Environment Committee this year, said Representative Mary Mushinsky (D-Wallingford), a member of the committee.
“One would just ban nips altogether, which would be the easiest and cleanest. The other would be to put them under the bottle bill system, where there is a refundable deposit,” she said.
The Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of Connecticut have argued that bans would disrupt long-standing, state-regulated and profitable commerce.
They suggest strengthening the current, existing surcharge system instead. The state legislative session begins on Feb. 4.
