North Haven stores sold 262,778 nips from April 1 through Sept. 30, and that earns the town $13,138.90 under Connecticut’s nickel-a-bottle surcharge on the tiny liquor bottles. The figures come from data the state Department of Consumer Protection posted on Oct. 23.
That’s 7.3% more than the $12,244.85 North Haven earned for the six months before, from October 2025 through March 2026, when the state counted 244,897 nips sold in town.
North Haven ranked 65th of the 169 towns and cities on the state’s list for the April-to-September period.
How the nickel-per-nip program works
Nips are liquor bottles of 50 milliliters or less, about one shot. Under the program, wholesalers collect a 5-cent surcharge from package stores on every nip they sell them, and stores build that cost into the shelf price. Twice a year, wholesalers send the money they collected to the towns where the nips were sold and report the amounts to the state’s Liquor Control Division, according to the Department of Consumer Protection.
The surcharge isn’t a deposit. Unlike the 10-cent deposit on cans and bottles under the state’s bottle bill, shoppers can’t return an empty nip for a refund.
Towns are supposed to spend the money on environmental protection and improvement. The department says on its website that it “has no authority over how the money is spent by municipalities.” According to a March explainer from CT Mirror, towns have used the money for things like street sweepers, recycling coordinators and Earth Day events.
How North Haven compares
North Haven’s total is small next to some of its neighbors. Here’s what nearby towns earned for April through September, according to the state data:
- New Haven: 2,362,305 nips, $118,115.25 (1st in the state, down 1.7%)
- Hamden: 1,056,593 nips, $52,829.65 (10th, up 4.7%)
- Wallingford: 699,758 nips, $34,987.90 (23rd, up 0.5%)
- East Haven: 417,358 nips, $20,867.90 (34th, up 3%)
- Cheshire: 271,978 nips, $13,598.90 (60th, up 10.4%)
- North Haven: 262,778 nips, $13,138.90 (65th, up 7.3%)
- North Branford: 150,450 nips, $7,522.50 (91st, up 3.6%)
Across Connecticut, the surcharge brought in $2,562,851.70 for the six months, from about 51.3 million nips. That’s up 6.8% from the $2,399,437.65 collected for October 2025 through March 2026, and up 3% from $2,487,612.25 for April through September 2025, the state’s report shows.
The bigger debate
The surcharge hasn’t settled the argument over nips. State Rep. Mary Mushinsky, D-Wallingford, said in February that they are now one of the two most commonly found items in Long Island Sound, according to CT Mirror. The outlet reported in March that some advocates and lawmakers want to let towns ban nips outright or add them to the bottle deposit program. Bills to let towns ban them have come up in past legislative sessions. Wholesalers and some liquor store owners have opposed those efforts.
For North Haven, the new report means a little more than $13,000 for this period, and about $25,400 across the last two reports combined.
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