Lawmakers: Bottle surcharge doesn’t help towns clean up

By Kate Ramunni Record-Journal staff

WALLINGFORD It’sa routine that state Rep. Mary Mushinsky, D-Wallingford, knows well getting off the train and walking home, a trip of just less than a halfmile. Along the way, she encounters nips small bottles of alcohol sold at liquor stores that are frequently strewn along roads, highways and parks.

“I’m walking home from the train right now and I’ve already taken pictures of about 10 of them and I just found another four, so that’s 14 and I’ve only gone two blocks,” Mushinsky said during a recent phone interview.

By the time the veteran lawmaker got home, she had counted 39 along the way. It’s an issue every city and town faces, and in response, the state legislature in 2021 passed a bill placing a fivecent surcharge on each 50 mL bottle, with the money going to municipalities to help pay for environmental cleanups, including efforts to remove nips from public places.

The funds are released to cities and towns in April and October of each year, and payments are based on the number of nips sold in the municipality. “The money is supposed to go to picking up things like this,” said Mushinsky, a member of the Environment Committee. But lawmakers have doubts that is actually happening.

“Just today, we sent a slight adjustment to the bottle law and it has language in it to have the Council on Environmental Quality find out what happened to the mon- ey sent to each town, so hopefully we will get a report on that,” she said. “I don’t think it works, to be honest, I don’t think the money does anything. It was the liquor industry’s idea but it’s not effective.”

The program is administered by the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of Connecticut, which collects the money and distributes it to municipalities.

“They put an extra fee on themselves so they wouldn’t have a deposit,” Mushinsky said. “They take five cents per bottle and give it to the town to clean up the environment, but clearly it does not work well and their product is all over the streets anyway. I personally am unhappy with how it’s playing out and feel we need to put them in the deposit law along with the other liquor containing beverages.”

In the last round of payments sent to cities and towns in October, Meriden received $47,069 for the period of April 1 to Sept. 30, 2022, and received a total of $82,592 for the year the program has existed. Cheshire received $9,766 for the sixmonth period and has received a total of $17,360 in the last year.

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