Police Chief Mark Bailey speaks to the Public Safety Committee last week about an ordinance banning nip bottles.

Empty nip bottles are littered around the city. 

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A privately sponsored redemption initiative for nip bottles has the Public Safety Committee postponing any recommendations on a ban.

Mayor Jennifer Macksey and Police Chief Mark Bailey had asked the City Council last month to consider prohibiting sales of the diminutive containers, citing littering and alcohol problems.

In the meantime, Councilor Keith Bona came up with the idea of a volunteer redemption program and soon raised donations from local businesses and organizations to fund the effort. Bona, Benjamin Lamb from the NAMAzing Initiative, and Berkshire Individual and Family Resources are launching the pilot program that will offer a 5-cent refund for each clean nip bottle returned to BFAIR's redemption center, starting Nov. 1.

At Wednesday's Public Safety Committee, Police Chief Mark Bailey brought up his presentation on banning nips from September's City Council meeting.

"It's just a huge blight in the city. It's just a big problem. People are walking over them. My officers are going into areas in the city, and they're basically interacting with people, having to get into confrontations, use-of-force situations that they are rolling around in the garbage as well. So what I was asking is to have a single-use nip ban as other towns throughout the commonwealth have been doing, and it showed success in those areas," he said. "However, I just wanted to open it for discussion to see if there's other means that we can talk about to try and figure out how to clean up most of this litter in the city."

Committee member Wayne Wilkinson said he is all for the ban because his previous office near the Whitney's Beverage Store it was littered with nips every morning.

"I personally think it's a problem. I think there should be a ban. I'll come right out and say it, they're everywhere. I know probably in the liquor store owner's best interest, not to get rid of them, because that's a quick buck for them," he said. "Nobody wants to buy a pint. They don't have the money, so they go and get a nip bottle, take a shot, and bam, it's right on the ground."

Bona was in attendance and spoke about the pilot initiative to get nip bottles off of the street.

"After the last meeting, something came back that I've been thinking of for a couple years and that was one initially, to see if the retailers themselves would do their own return policy," he said. "But I also understand, especially mentioned, like Whitney's, it's a very small store. You got one employee. It can be very logistically complicated to want to be taking returns on the product that is not required to so I made a phone call to BFAIR, that has a redemption center, and I said, would you take nips if we can get you funding?"

He asked the committee if it would consider tabling the thought of a ban until spring to see how the initiative worked as he isn't a fan of banning something that is legal in the state.

"I hope that the state at some point puts a refund on these bottles along with other bottles, because last week or two weeks ago, when we saw the presentation Chief Bailey, I mean, most of the trash I saw wasn't nips, it was other trash," he said.

"Nips, while they are a problem, they're small. Now, this doesn't curb, or you could say, help, people buying them and getting drunk and if minors are drinking them, but I also don't know if you eliminate the nips, if that's going to stop drinking anyway."

Two liquor store owners in attendance, Chirag Patel of Liquor World and Market, and Nick Patel, no relation, of Whitney’s Beverage Store donated $500 in total to the initiative. 

Chirag Patel said he called three major alcohol distributor companies: Southern Glacier, M.S. Walker, and Martignetti, who were willing to put in recycling bins but they would have to be responsible for emptying out the bins.

Police Lt. Anthony Beverly said he is excited to see how the program works and that it might slow down in the wintertime with the snow, but there might be an increase in the springtime.

"I will say that I'm actually really, really interested to see how this program works out in the end. I have a feeling that, I think that you're going to see an abundance right in the beginning of these bottles getting picked up, brought in, because people are going to be out there picking them up, and that is going to slow down," he said. "But just because it slowed down doesn't mean that's not successful. So I'm really interested to see how this works out."

The council recommended to postpone a vote on a ban until the second meeting in February to see how the program works.

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