Hearing on nip bottle bill set for Wednesday at Statehouse
In addition, a Bourne resident says it’s time to consider banning the sale of the miniature packaged alcoholic beverages.
BOURNE — As nip bottles continue to line Cape roads, discarded by motorists who may be drinking while driving, one Bourne resident has decided it’s time to consider banning the sale of the miniature packaged alcoholic beverages.
“It will stop a lot of people from drinking on the road while they are in public, which would be the goal of this ban,” Jeremey Canfield told the Board of Selectmen earlier this month.
Most nip bottles contain hard alcohol, and Canfield says it can take as few as two nips to be legally intoxicated. He said he understands that liquor stores will be against the ban because nips make up part of their revenue, but he argues the ban would make the community much safer.
The selectmen noted the ban also would help the environment by reducing trash on the side of the roadways.
However, the problem is much larger than one town can solve, said Selectman James Potter, who added the path toward a solution should begin at the state level.
“My sense of it, it’s complex,” said Judith Froman, the board’s chairwoman. “It is litter and alcoholism and that culture.”
The question of whether or not to ban the 50-milliliter and 100-milliliter bottles of alcohol has been percolating throughout the Cape as well as at the state level.
An act promoting the proper disposal of miniatures, sponsored by state Rep. Randy Hunt, R-Sandwich, will be heard by the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy on Wednesday morning at the Statehouse.
If passed, the bill would add nip bottles 100 milliliters or less to the 5-cent deposit container law.
The bill, which has failed to pass since it was originally introduced in January 2017, is finally gaining some momentum, Hunt said Friday.
“People all around the state ... are paying more and more attention to this because, quite frankly, it is still out of control,” he said.
The problem first came to light when a constituent from East Sandwich reached out to him after he picked up trash in his neighborhood, Hunt said. The man told him he couldn’t believe how many nips he picked up and asked the state representative if he could do something about it.
Hunt thought it would be relatively easy to add the nip bottles to the list of containers that get a 5-cent deposit. Doing so would make them valuable for people to pick up and recycle.
While Hunt acknowledged the bill won’t stop anyone from throwing the nip bottle out the window, it would encourage people to pick them up off the ground.
Some support the proposed bill but argue that it doesn’t go far enough.
“I would like to see a higher deposit than a nickel,” said Neil Rhein, executive director of Keep Massachusetts Beautiful, who will testify in support of the bill in Boston on Wednesday.
Rhein noted that a nickel today is not what it was worth 40 years ago when the bottle-recycling deposit was started. Although the deposit won’t help solve the problem, it will certainly help, he said.
Keep Massachusetts Beautiful, which has a branch on Cape Cod, conducts hundreds of clean-up events around the state each year. Rhein said nip bottles are always among the top five things people pick up at the events.
“There are a lot of nickels sitting out there,” Rhein said. “Some people will pick them up and cash in their haul.”
In terms of getting a full-on ban of nip bottles passed statewide, Hunt said everyone is looking to see what will happen in Chelsea, the only city or town in the state with such a ban. The ban is currently being challenged by package stores.
“If they survive a court challenge, which is where I think it is going, then I do see plenty of other towns and cities taking this up,” Hunt said.
The Chelsea ban, which was put in place in August 2018, is being appealed to the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission by the city’s package stores, Chelsea City Manager Tom Ambrosino said. For now, however, the stores are complying with it.
Most government officials feel it was an appropriate measure by the city’s Licensing Board to ban the 50-milliliter and 100-milliliter bottles, Ambrosino said.
“People feel like it has made a little bit of a difference in litter and is one of the factors in reducing the public drunkenness we have been seeing,” he said.
The town of Mashpee is hoping to replicate what Chelsea has done by creating a bylaw of its own banning nip bottles from liquor stores, said Andrew Gottlieb, chairman of the Mashpee Board of Selectmen.
The board is the regulatory authority for liquor licenses in the town, which are renewed each year, Gottlieb said. But before moving forward with the proposed bylaw, the selectmen are discussing it with town counsel and are waiting to see what happens in Chelsea.
In Eastham, a plastic and marine hazards reduction bylaw being proposed by the selectmen for the annual town meeting in May would ban the sale and distribution of certain single-use plastic items, including nips.
A nip bottle ban was also part of a recent discussion by the Falmouth Board of Selectmen.
Falmouth Selectman Susan Moran said there is concern over how nip bottles contribute to litter in town. But she said the issue cannot be solved on a town-by-town basis. If only one community does something on the issue, then there is the argument that someone can go to a neighboring town to buy a nip, she said.
“It would be great if all the communities got together and had the same ordinance, because that would have the best chance in cleaning up the problem,” Moran said.
On Thursday, a petition article was filed by Falmouth residents to create a bylaw that would prohibit the sale of alcoholic containers less than 100 milliliters, said Alan Robinson, a member of the Falmouth Litter Reduction Team and the Cape Cod Anti-Litter Coalition.
The petition article comes after the Litter Reduction Team conducted 52 roadside surveys that counted the number of nip bottles, water bottles, beer cans, takeout food containers and more found on the side of the road. Robinson said about 32% of the litter were nip bottles.
The Litter Reduction Team hopes to get other towns across the Cape on board with the ban as well, he said.
Robinson, who also will testify in support of the bill Wednesday, said he hopes “there is enough fire that the state Legislature moves on this.”
