A Glastonbury man has collected more than 240 ‘nips’ bottles as trash on the street. Now he’s on a mission to get a Connecticut law changed.

After discovering a hot spot for discarded “nip” bottles on a connector leading to Glastonbury High School, a local man is launching a campaign to change the state law so towns can decide individually whether to ban nips.

Resident Tom Metzner said he welcomes others in the state to join the cause.

“It’s easy to litter. I see them all over,” he said, referring to the bottles. “These nips should be banned. They are very easy to litter and encourage drinking and driving.”

In response to complaints throughout the state about the litter created by the nip bottles, a state law passed in 2021 imposes the 5-cent surcharge on each 50 ml “nip” container sold in Connecticut — those tiny bottles of alcohol typically found behind the counter.

In the first full year the state’s “nickel-per-nip” program has generated more than $4.2 million for Connecticut cities and towns, said Lawrence F. Cafero, president and treasurer of Three Tiers for Connecticut and executive director and legal counsel for Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of Connecticut, Inc.

Three Tiers for Connecticut is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization; it represents major wine and spirits wholesalers in Connecticut, as well as suppliers and retailers.

Municipalities are required to spend the nips money on litter reduction or environmental initiatives, but not necessarily tied to getting rid of nips litter.

Glastonbury sold 386,000 of the bottles during that first year and took in $19,317, Metzner said.

Metzner, who has been picking up the bottles weekly in that same hot spot where he discovered them on Dec. 4, addressed the town council about the problem during public comment on Jan. 10, suggesting a townwide ban on the nips. He also asked what the town was doing with the money it received from the program.

“I said, ‘Please don’t get used to this money, it has to go away,” Metzner said he told them.

As per protocol, the usual town leaders didn’t respond to Metzner’s questions during public comment sessions.

But Town Manager Richard Johnson told the Courant by email after the meeting: “Initially we will allocate these monies to expand our food waste collection program to include a satellite collection location to supplement to the collection site at the transfer station.”

A good use of money, but it doesn’t address a nip clean up directly, Metzner said.

Town Council Chairman Thomas P. Gullotta said, also after the meeting and by email, that nips are the “perfect example of unnecessary product waste.”

“A quick gulp or slurp as the case may be and out the window goes another indestructible piece of plastic,” Gullotta wrote. “The tragedy is rather than the legislature stopping this waste stream, they caved to the industry who agreed to a minimal tax on each purchase if recycling was dropped.”

While Metzner’s ideal solution is a townwide ban on the nips, as has been done in other states, that’s not possible in Connecticut, Cafero said, because the law is you can’t ban categories of liquor products in a community. A a municipality could decide to be dry, banning all alcohol sales, Cafero said.

A ban on nips would have to be statewide and that could potentially be done by petitioning the legislature, Cafero said. That’s been tried before and failed, Cafero said.

Metzner said he will try to change Connecticut’s law so that municipalities are allowed to ban them if they choose to do so.

Cafero said nips are part of a “culture of concealment,” as they fit in the palm of a hand, a pocket and are often a way of hiding drinking.

Cafero said nips are usually discarded within 25-feet of purchase.

“They’re consumed and chucked out the window,” Cafero said.

He said so far the nips tax program has been “wildly successful.”

He said municipalities have gotten “creative” in using the money for litter or environmental purposes, which is required to be open to just about any possibility. Some have used it to support recycling coordinator positions, while others have partnered with local non-profit organizations on litter cleanups.

“The hope was the citizenry would hold the towns accountable,” Cafero said of the uses.

Cafero said using a deposit/redeemable model with nips wouldn’t have worked because redemption machines aren’t fitted for them.

Metzner said he will try to get environmental groups in town to join the cause.

Metzner, who works for the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said he is launching the campaign as a private citizen and it’s not connected with his DEEP position.

Metzner said he has seen nips littering in other places both in and out of Glastonbury, but his encounter with the hot spot began Dec. 4 when he walked to the high school with his son for an event.

On that day he said he found lots of them on a small one-way connector from New London Turnpike to Hubbard Street.

That day he was “shocked” to pick up 87 nip bottles in 15 minutes and has gone back just about every week since seeing no less than 12 each time. So far he has collected more than 240 empty nips and counting.

Metzner wonders if the nips were purchased at an area liquor store and he also wonders if high school students are discarding the nips because the school is one-tenth of a mile away. He said there are no sidewalks on the connector, so they’re likely being tossed from cars.

It’s unlikely anyone would have the answer to those questions.

Metzner said he asked Glastonbury High School Principal Nancy Bean in passing about whether high school students could be drinking those nips and was told it is “a topic of conversation there.”

Bean was asked by the Courant and, in an email message, wrote: “I am not aware of it. I forwarded this to the Director of Security, Keith O’Brien.”

Metzner said the “vast majority” of the nips are Captain Morgan spiced rum – which he says are probably emptied into a can of cola, and vodka nip bottles are the second most common ones he finds.